Talk:Servant Girl Annihilator

message: From the sentence (O. Henry) did however make one important contribution to the story: he coined the term "Servant Girl Annihilator" for his friends working at the Austin Daily Statesman I have removed the word "important" because it does not really describe the significance of his "contribution", which might be better characterized by the word "trivial". Hi There 09:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What a trivial edit. I would think the coinage to be fairly important as universal terminology shapes public perception and public memory. Would we recall the Whitechapel Murders half so well now if the killer had not been coined Jack the Ripper? 75.34.152.194 (talk) 00:23, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

text: I think it was a good edit because this killer was never referred to by anyone as the "Servant Girl Annihilator." Only O. Henry, in a private letter to a friend, makes a sarcastic reference to the murders. Steven Saylor, when he wrote his wildly inaccurate historical ficition book about the Austin murders, needed a catchy name for the killer and found it in the O. Henry letters. Trivial at best was Steven Saylor's contribution--it is Saylor who named this killer, not O. Henry.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alienistneurologist (talk • contribs) 04:32, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: O. Henry's "Important" Contribution To The Case?

message: Some of the refs are missing page numbers. Can anyone help with this?⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 05:16, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: ...also, I've moved this ref ...Fort Worth Daily Gazette, Vol. 11, No. 159, Ed. 1, (Fort Worth, Tex.) Sunday, January 3, 1886. from the title of the Victim section. I'm not sure what the ref is supposed to mean...a reiteration of the victim names?⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 03:41, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Refs need page numbers 

message: When looking at the footnotes on the victims, I see that Clara Strand, Christine Martenson and Clara Dick do not appear in the footnoted reference.  None of the contemporaneous newspaper reports which I was able to find through the Library of Congress Chronicling America search engine mentioned the three victims above by name, though I did read a mention of two Swedish servant girls who had been injured.  see - Fort Worth daily gazette  September 29, 1885,  http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86064205/1885-09-29/ed-1/seq-1/  
:Strand and Martenson are named as victims by the newspapers, but because they survived the attack, they were not listed as victims of the murderer when the reward was offered for the murderer of the other victims listed.
The Servant Girl Murders (Austin, Texas 1885) by J. R. Galloway, does not list Clara Dick in its index.  
:That would be a mistake on the part of Galloway. Clara Dick was blinded by a blow from a hatchet by a white man who then tried to drag her out her bedroom window. Her mother rescued her and recieved a blow from the hatchet by the man, who she testified was white. Clara and her mother blamed her husband, a hack-driver named Charlie Dick, but Dick was exonerated by Waco authorities and eyewitnesses who placed him in Waco at the time of the attack on Clara.
The two Swedish girls are mentioned, p. 15, et. seq., but the attack is of a different sort than the others mentioned in the wiki article.  The attack involved gunshots, and was part of a wave of attacks that night, including at least three other attacks on servant quarters.  The Galloway book doesn't include the Swedish girls' last names.  
:That would be Galloway's omission--the names are found online in the 1885 directory for the city of Austin.
It does have newspaper articles detailing many, many more attacks, though they were not fatal, and some were definitely carried out by a gang or gang of ruffians/criminals.  There was a series of attacks March 13, 1885, another series of attacks on March 18, including the Swedish girls, more attacks on April 29,  more on May 1, then the murder of Eliza Shelley on May 7, then May 22 the murder of Irene Cross.  There had been another attack by someone on the same night, then three attacks on servant girls on June 2, including one in which an African American servant named Jane Coleman was shot and wounded.  Several of the contemporaneou newspaper articles compiled in the Galloway book mention "dozens" of night-time or early morning attacks aimed at quarters of "servant girls." ("Girl" in the parlance of the time seemed to mean female servant, and often the attacks were on mature women. Hypercallipygian (talk) 21:47, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Victim List Doesn't Check Out 

message: " Five of the women were dragged, unconscious but still alive, ... " - did he chloroform the victims? 104.169.39.45 (talk) 06:12, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Eh? How was this accomplished?

message: This article is poorly developed, sourced, and written and requires significant attention. Some information in the article is unsourced and either needs to be given proper citations from reliable sources or removed if none can be found. Most of the sections in the article are poorly written/developed and need to be rewritten entirely. Information and sections can be moved and distilled into the following sections The article is also missing important information on the Background of the area before and during the murders which needs to be added with proper citations from reliable sources. The article is also missing information on the killer's Modus Operandi which needs to be added to the article with proper citations from reliable sources. Cleanup and reorganization of the article is also necessary as there are pieces of information that can be moved into different sections: Background, Murders, Modus Operandi, Investigation (Includes sub-section on Suspects), and Popular culture. All of these section should be properly formatted and each piece of information given proper citations from reliable sources. This article has potential to become GA and FA if enough attention is given to it. Hopefully someone comes along and gives it and other articles on Unidentified serial killers the attention they need to fulfill their full potential.--Paleface Jack 16:51, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation, Rewrite, and Expansion