Alma Rattenbury

On 23 July 1913 in Seattle, Alma married Caledon Robert John Radclyffe Dolling, the nephew of Eric Alexander, 5th Earl of Caledon and a resident of Vancouver.[1][2] With the outbreak of the First World War, he joined up and was commissioned in the 11th Irish Fusiliers of Canada.[3] He was posted to Prince Rupert as second in command, and was involved in local guard duties and the training of soldiers.[3] Alma devoted her spare time to entertaining the troops and creating competitions for them.[3]

In August 1915, the couple moved to England and her husband was granted a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers in September 1915: he was posted to France in October 1915.[3] Alma worked at the War Office in central London,[1] while living with her aunt-in-law in Chislehurst.[4] Her first husband was awarded the Military Cross (MC) for leading a night raid to capture a crater from the Germans on 6 February 1916: he was injured and 40 British soldiers died during the action.[3][4] He was injured for a second time on 25 April during a raid on the German trenches and required hospital treatment.[4] He was granted leave to attend the investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace for his MC on 29 May 1916: Alma accompanied her husband to the palace but was obliged to wait outside while he received his medal from King George V.[4] He returned to France and the front in July 1916.[4] On 3 August, he was made a temporary captain and the officer commanding B Company, 2nd Battalion.[4] He was killed in action on 20 August 1916 during the First Battle of the Somme.[5][3] This left Alma widowed at the age of 24.[4]

Impression of the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont; painting by Norah Neilson Gray.

Following her husband's death, there was a protracted process to be awarded the correct widow's pension. She was initially only offered a second lieutenant's grade of pension, but with a supporting letter from a former prime minister of Canada, she was finally awarded a captain's war widow pension of £100 a year plus a £250 gratuity.[4] Now financially independent, and influenced in part by the wish to see her husband's grave in France, she volunteered with the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service as a stretcher bearer and field ambulance orderly.[1][3]

On 6 January 1917, Alma arrived in Creil, France, to begin her work as an orderly at the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont Abbey.[4] The volunteers were not paid, but did receive a uniform, free lodging and board.[4] Orderlies were the lowest rank of the hospital hierarchy; and undertook strenuous and emotionally draining activities such as cleaning blood from the floor of the operating theatre, holding down men or their limbs as amputations took place, carrying stretchers of injured or dead soldiers up and down flights of stairs, and changing bed linens.[4] In the summer of 1917, an auxiliary hospital was set up at Villers-Cotterêts to be closer to the front, and Alma was one of the first group to staff the converted wooden huts which had become fully operational August.[4] She wrote in a letter that she could sleep through the bombing falling nearby, but would regularly wake at the sound of rats scratching near her sleeping area.[4] Then, from October 1917, she returned to work at Royaumont Abbey.[4] While in France she was attached to the French Red Cross and served with distinction, being awarded the Croix de Guerre with star and palm.[1] She was twice wounded during the war.[1] In January 1918, she returned to England.[4]

It was later stated that her experiences in the War, from the loss of her husband to her volunteer work, changed her irreparably.[4]

In January 1918, Thomas Compton Packenham was on leave from the Army in London, and he met and began a relationship with Alma. Packenham had married Phyllis Price in 1915, but in October 1918, he wrote a letter to his first wife informing her their marriage was over.[4] Alma was cited in the Packenhams' divorce in 1920.[1]

In 1920, the couple emigrated to the United States of America, claiming on their Ellis Island entrance papers that they were a married Irish couple and that Compton was the son of his childless uncle, William Pakenham.[4] They lived in an apartment on Eleventh Avenue, New York City. Pakenham found work as a lecturer on Japan, claiming to have attended the University of Oxford and calling himself "Dr Pakenham": he had never attended university and held no degrees.[4] Alma gave piano lessons, in contrast to her pre-war status as a concert soloist.[4] The couple married on 15 July 1920 in Brooklyn, and they had a son, Christopher, in July 1921.[4] However, Alma left him to return to her native Canada in March 1922: their marriage formally ended in divorce in 1925.[1] Alma earned her living in Canada by giving music lessons and composing song music with the pen name Lozanne.[1][4] Her songs were sung by the likes of Richard Tauber and Frank Titterton, and played by bandleaders such as Bert Ambrose.[1]

Francis Rattenbury in 1924

In 1925, Alma officially divorced Pakenham and was cited in the divorce of Francis Rattenbury (born 1867) from his first wife.[1] He had been born and educated in Leeds, England, and then trained as an architect.[4] In 1892, he emigrated to Canada, setting in Vancouver and establishing himself as a leading architect in British Columbia.[4][6] Amongst his designs were the British Columbia Parliament Buildings and The Empress Hotel.[6] They married in late 1925, but the controversy that surrounded their infidelity and his subsequent divorce led the couple to emigrate to England.[1] Together they had one son, John, born in 1928.[1] That year, Rattenbury retired at the age of 60.[7]

Following the birth of their son, the couple maintained a celibate relationship, with separate bedrooms on separate floors of their home, the Villa Madeira, 5 Manor Road, Bournemouth.[1][4] They did not have an unhappy marriage, but it was not a happy one either.[7] They occasionally quarrelled about money, with Rattenbury giving his wife £1000 a year to cover all household expenses including bills, clothing, food and alcohol (Rattenbury was a heavy drinker of whiskey), and the education of her first son.[7]^: 6 The only major quarrel, in which Rattenbury gave Alma a black eye, occurred in July 1934 and was related to his depressive turns in which he would threaten suicide.[7]^: 7

On 25 September 1934, an advert appeared in the Bournemouth Daily Echo looking for a teenage boy to be a live-in house servant.[7]^: 1 The advert was answered by George Percy Stoner (born 1916), a 17-year-old who was then employed by the couple as a chauffeur and handyman.[1] Stoner turned 18 in November 1934, and at some point became the lover of Alma: her husband, Rattenbury, was a mari complaisant (i.e. he knew of and tolerated the affair).[1]

On 24 March 1935, Rattenbury was sleeping in an armchair in the drawing room when he was struck multiple times in the head with a wooden carpenter's hammer.[7]^: 2 Alma called for the local doctor to come and he arrived by taxi.[4] The doctor found Rattenbury lying on his bed in the downstairs bedroom, with a blood-soaked sheet wrapped around his head and no trousers on; he was unconscious.[4] There was blood covering the armchair and carpet, in the drawing room next door.[4] The local doctor called on a surgeon who, having inspected Rattenbury with difficulty as Alma kept interfering, called an ambulance to take him to Strathallen Nursing Home.[1] There, his head was shaved and three wounds were identified, confirming foul play, and not the first assumption made by the local doctor that Rattenbury had hit his head on the grand piano in the drawing room.[4][7]^: 2

Alma was "highly excited, incoherent, and intoxicated", and, when the police arrived, declared that she was the one who had attacked her husband with a mallet.[1] She had to be sedated by the local doctor, who had returned to Villa Madeira at 4am, with "half a grain of morphia".[7]^: 2–3 The following morning, Alma was taken to the police station where she stated "That is right — I did it deliberately, and would do it again", and she was charged with doing grievous bodily harm with intent to murder.[7]^: 3 She later stated she had no recollection of that night and could not remember signing a confession.[1]

On 28 March 1935, Rattenbury died of his injuries and Stoner admitted that he had struck him with a mallet.[1] The following day, on 29 March, Alma and Stoner were both arrested and charged with murder at Bournemouth Magistrates' Court.[1] The Director of Public Prosecutions decided to proceed against both parties, as both had admitted murder.[1] They were not charged with conspiracy; rather each was charged with having committed the murder alone.[1]

Both Alma and Stoner entered not guilty pleas.[8] The trial opened on 27 May 1935 at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (the Old Bailey), before Sir Travers Humphreys.[1] The trial was heavily covered in the press, with one newspaper sending the entertainment editor rather than a crime writer to cover it.[4] On 31 May, following clear direction from the judge and after less than an hour deliberation, the jury acquitted Alma and convicted Stoner.[1]

There was probably no one in England, and no one in Court when the trial opened, save Mrs. Rattenbury, her solicitor and counsel, Stoner and his solicitor and counsel, and Irene Riggs, who did not think Mrs. Rattenbury was guilty of the crime of murder. [...] The whole truth about Mrs. Rattenbury came out during the trial, and the woman, who at first seemed so guilty, was seen to be undoubtedly innocent.

— F. Tennyson Jesse[7]^: 3

On 4 June, she bought a knife, travelled to Bournemouth, and on the bank of the River Avon near Christchurch Priory, stabbed herself in the chest six times, three times penetrating her heart. She left a note stating: "If I only thought it would help Stoner I would stay but it has been pointed out too vividly that I cannot help him—and that is my death sentence". She was buried on 8 June 1935 at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth. Due to the cause celebre, flowers were stolen from her grave and people broke into Villa Madeira to take items from her home as souvenirs.[1]

Stoner had been sentenced to death, having been found guilty of murder. However, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He served seven years in prison, before being released to join the British Army for the Second World War.[1] He returned to the area and died at Christchurch in 2000.[9][10]