The Tale of Francis Mawson Rattenbury

This is the story as told by our tour guide on the amphibious bus in Victoria. It is to the best of my memory with no effort to verify any of it.

Francis Rattenbury was in his early twenties when he won the contest to determine who would be the architect to build the new capitol building in Victoria. He had submitted the plans drawn by his uncle. He did not have any personal experience in construction.

He did pretty well for such a noob. See the photo at the top? Yeah, not bad. Too bad he forgot the bathrooms. That and coming in at twice the price as what was budgeted.

His next project was The Empress Hotel:

This time he came in on budget and even remembered the bathrooms. Unluckily, he built it on poor soil with no corrective measures so that the building had been rapidly sinking into the ground since construction.

After that (Yes, amazingly there was an after that) he built the Canadian Pacific Railway Steamship Terminal.

This time he got it right, but civilization had mostly caught up with him, and architects with better education took much of his potential work away from him.

Still, he and his wife, Florence, lived well for quite some time. At least they did until his much younger mistress, Alma, convinced him to divorce Florence and marry her instead. Which he did to much acrimony.

Francis, who by now was entirely too old for this kind of behavior, and Alma moved back to England, from whence he’d come.

Florence got the better deal, even if he had refused to pay her living expense before the divorce. His waning career made money tight. His reputation was ruined and no new work came in. And Alma fell in love with their 18 year old chauffeur.

Well, that’s what she claimed, anyway. She talked the kid into murdering Francis. And he did! Then she committed suicide over it, and the kid did eight years in jail.

The tour guide suspected Florence was glad to be clear of it.