Francis Hayman Fowler

Francis Edmund Hayman Fowler (c.1820 - 24 February 1893) was an architect.

The senior partner in the architectural practice of Fowler and Hill of Serjeant's Inn, Fowler specialised in the design of theatres.

A resident of Brixton in the parish of Lambeth, he became a member of the vestry or local authority established in 1855. From 1868 he was one of Lambeth Vestry's representatives on the Metropolitan Board of Works, serving for twenty years.

Fowler's membership of the Metropolitan Board's Theatres Committee and Building Act Committee led to allegations of conflict of interest. The Metropolitan Board of Works, as it redeveloped parts of London, was in a position to award potentially lucrative contracts to architects and engineers. With the creation of Shaftesbury Avenue the board acquired a number of plots of land which, instead of disposing of by public tender, it sold privately. It emerged that board members had been able to obtain interests in the land and that Fowler had been employed as an architect on some of the projects.

Following protests by some of the vestries and district boards that elected the MBW, a royal commission was appointed. Fowler gave evidence in May 1888, freely admitting he been given large payments, but insisting these had been unsolicited. He resigned from the board shortly after his appearance at the investigation.

He died at his Brixton home in 1893, aged 73.