12 Facts About Francis Rattenbury

Francis Mawson Rattenbury was a British architect although most of his career was spent in British Columbia, Canada, where he designed the province's legislative building among other public commissions.

Francis Rattenbury began his architectural career with an apprenticeship in 1884 to the "Lockwood and Mawson Company" in England, where he worked until he left for Canada.

Francis Rattenbury designed Paardeburg Gate, a memorial to South African war soldiers opposite the Legislative Buildings, 1901.

Francis Rattenbury worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway as their Western Division Architect.

Francis Rattenbury designed many hotels and stations for the GTP, but they were never completed because of the death of the president, Charles Melville Hays, in the sinking of the RMS Titanic and the company's subsequent bankruptcy.

In contrast to the Maxwells, Francis Rattenbury had no formal training in architecture, and with increasing professionalism, he was outpaced by better-trained and better-educated architects.

Francis Rattenbury planned to supply meat and cattle to prospectors during the Klondike Gold Rush and he ordered three steam trains to serve the Yukon Territory.

Francis Rattenbury married Alma in 1925 after Florence agreed to his request for divorce.

Francis Rattenbury began an affair with George Percy Stoner, their 18-year-old chauffeur.

Francis Rattenbury had sustained a series of blows with a carpenter's mallet, the blows savage enough to remove the back of his skull and to cause his false teeth to fall out; he died four days later.

Francis Rattenbury's wife confessed, but Stoner admitted to the housekeeper that he had actually carried out the deed.

Francis Rattenbury married in 1944 and fathered a daughter in 1948.