The bad man who married five wives and a notorious murder

The murder of Francis Rattenbury and the trial of his wife Alma and their chauffeur George Stoner was one of the most notorious cases of the twentieth century. It was a national scandal when it took place in 1935 and continued to intrigue later generations, as the subject of Terence Rattigan's play Cause Célèbre.

The murder took place in March 1935. Francis Rattenbury, a noted architect who first came to prominence when he won a competition to design the Parliament Buildings in Victoria, British Columbia aged just 25. He went on to design many other notable buildings in the province, including the Empress Hotel in Victoria and the Principal Courthouse in Vancouver (now Vancouver Art Gallery). He married and had two children, but by the early 1920s he was looking ill and a number of investments were not as profitable as hoped. It was around this time that he met Alma Pakenham, who was nearly 30 years his junior, and her attentions, combined with some medical treatment, had renewed his health and vitality.

Following a long and acrimonious divorce Francis married Alma and returned to Victoria with her and her son, Christopher Pakenham. They soon had a son of their own, John. In 1929 they returned to Europe and finally settled in Bournemouth, at the Villa Madeira.

Their financial problems continued and this took its toll on their relationship. Alma began an affair with their 18 year old chauffeur-handyman, George Stoner.

Late in the evening of 24 March 1935, a day that had played out much like any other, Francis Rattenbury was found fatally injured, and he died four days later. Alma initially claimed she had bludgeoned her husband, then that it had been done by her lover Stoner. Both were charged with murder and stood trial in June of that year. Stoner was found guilty and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment following a petition to the Home Secretary from those who felt her had been manipulated by Alma into committing the murder. Alma herself was acquitted of both murder and being an accessory after the fact, but a few days later took her own life, stabbing herself six times and drowning in the River Stour.

So how is Simona linked to this notorious case? The name Pakenham should give it away; Alma was the second wife of my bounder of a great grandfather Compton Pakenham, Simona's father. He had left my great grandmother Phil as she was pregnant with Simona and met his baby daughter only once. Despite being certain he was living with Alma at this time, it took some years for evidence of his adultery to be obtained, after which they were finally able to divorce, with Alma cited as the other woman.

Compton Pakenham, my great grandfather, looking very innocent, with his sister Cynthia

Compton was born in Japan, where his father was Naval Attaché and spent his childhood there and in China, before enlisting in the Coldstream Guards. A distant relative of the Longfords, this remote link to aristocracy added to his charm. This charm had worked on Ginny, who "had seen in this handsome Guards officer the kind of son-in-law she was looking for. As firmly, at a slightly later date, she pushed him out of the house again, threatening him with a poker, because he had taken no time at all to reveal himself as a most unsatisfactory choice".

Alma and Compton married in 1921 and had a son, Christopher, but this marriage was no more successful than his marriage to my great grandmother. Living in Long Island and with no regular source of income Compton lectured on economic conditions in Japan and worked for the New York Herald Tribune as a book reviewer. He continued to find ways to enhance his British charm, this time claiming he was schooled at Harrow and inventing a D.Phil from Oxford, but people seemed to find these misrepresentations eccentric rather than suspicious. Once again, financial difficulties contributed to the breakdown of their relationship but this time Alma didn't resort to murder, and moved with Christopher to British Columbia, where she then met Francis Rattenbury.

I understand that Simona did meet her half brother Christopher at some point, although he didn't really know his father any better than she had done. Compton was certainly no advert for parenthood, but the 'bad man who married five wives' wasn't quite so bad after all, when compared with the second of his wives!

Read more about The Rattenbury Case in the Penguin True Crime series