Servant Girl Annihilator and had a club foot which was similar to a footprint believed to have been left by the killer. In February 1886, shortly after the last murder, Elgin was shot and killed by police while he was attempting to assault a girl with a knife. William Sydney Porter, better known as the short story writer O. Henry, was living in Austin at the time of the murders. Porter coined the term "Servant Girl Annihilators" in a May 10, 1885, letter addressed to his friend Dave Hall and later included in his anthology "Rolling Stones": "Town is fearfully dull," wrote Porter,
William Townsend Porter William Townsend Porter William Townsend Porter (1862-1949) was an American physician, physiologist, and medical educator who spent most of his career at Harvard Medical School. He founded the Harvard Apparatus company, which produced laboratory equipment for teaching and research in physiology, and was the founding editor of the "American Journal of Physiology". Porter was born on September 24, 1862, in Plymouth, Ohio. His father was also a physician. He attended the St. Louis Medical College (now the Washington University School of Medicine) and received his M.D. in 1885. He then studied physiological chemistry briefly in Philadelphia before traveling to Germany