Talk:Hammersmith nude murders

Discrepancies

• Gwynneth Rees - cause of death stated as strangled with ligature but infobox says 'Unknown'
• Hannah Tailford - stated as strangled but infobox says 'Drowning'
• Irene Lockwood - no cause stated, infobox says 'Drowning'

Drowning may not be inconsistent with assault if the victim is rendered unconscious and thrown into water, but the circumstances need to be better explained in the text to remove doubt. I leave this to those who have, unlike me, more than a passing interest. Akld guy (talk) 20:18, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Akld guy: The article is under construction, but the bot removed the template :) The infoboxes are correct - the original text in the article is not. Keri (talk) 20:20, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

It's safe to say that any sentence which does not have a reference - eg Gwynneth Rees and ligature - is suspect. I was working through the article with several books, and correcting where necessary. Keri (talk) 20:23, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Re:Reese, her body was decapitated by the mechanical shovel that uncovered her. The hyoid bone was found nearby, broken, but the pathologist could not determine if this was due to strangulation or the inadvertent decapitation. The destruction of the neck tissue by the digger's shovel prevented further examination. Keri (t · c) 15:07, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Title

Jack the Stripper is fine as a redirect. It is not suitable as the article's title for the following reasons:

• the article is about the murders, not the perpetrator(s) - nothing is known about the perpetrator(s)
• it is not known that a single perpetrator - the media construct "Jack the Stripper" - carried out the killings
• the series of killings were commonly collectively referred to for several decades as the "nude murders" and the "Hammersmith murders" - the more lurid use of Jack the Stripper has only grown relatively recently as an internet phenomenon

Keri (t · c) 14:11, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Page move objection

I must object to the page move from Hammersmith nude murders to West London nude murders by Jim Michael. Whilst the murders may have been outside the boundaries of Hammersmith, "Hammersmith nude murders" are how they are always referred to. I'm not aware of any instance where they are called the "West London nude murders" --John B123 (talk) 14:39, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

HNM isn't the common name either; Jack the Stripper is used more often. The current title is rarely used, but an example is this article in The Times: The objections to JTS could be also used to move Jack the Ripper. Most of the victims weren't found in Hammersmith & we shouldn't have a title that's factually incorrect. The murders took place in a few different years, so it's not practical to have years in the title. We could include serial in the title, but it's uncertain that all of them were committed by the same person/people. Jim Michael (talk) 15:24, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Try a Goggle search for "Hammersmith nude murders" and see the number of articles that use that term. Do the same for "West London nude murders", and all the results that come up call the murders the Hammersmith nude murders. You cannot simply rename articles from the common name simply because it isn't accurate. --John B123 (talk) 17:54, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

HNM is far more common than WLNM, although the latter has been used - including in the Times article I've provided. JTS returns well over 3 times as many results as HNM, which indicates that JTS is the common name. Jim Michael (talk) 18:14, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

JTS is the common name of the unidentified serial killer, the common name of the murders is HNM. Compare with Suffolk Strangler and the Ipswich serial murders (which geographically occurred further from Ipswich than the HNM did from Hammersmith), and Crossbow Cannibal and the Bradford murders (where the body parts were recovered outside Bradford. --John B123 (talk) 18:46, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

There are some significant differences between this & the ISM. All the victims in the latter case worked the streets of Ipswich, which is almost certainly where their killer Steve Wright met them. In addition, he lived in that town at the time. That means that the killer & victims were all Ipswich-based. In addition, it's the only large settlement near to where the victims' bodies were found. None of those things are (known to be) true in this case. According to this article, only 1 victim was found in Hammersmith & none of the others are stated to have had any connection to there. Jim Michael (talk) 22:52, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

The significant thing is that the ISM are commonly known as that, and we call the article that. The same applies to the Bradford Murders. In all three cases the geographic naming may not be correct. I see no reason why we should use the common name in this case. At the time of the murders, there was a London Borough of Hammersmith. I don't know the boundaries of the Borough, but it is possible that although the bodies were not found in Hammersmith as we currently know it, they were within the borough hence the origin of the the name? --John B123 (talk) 00:19, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Prior to 1 April 1965 the Metropolitan Borough of Hammersmith existed, which covered a significantly smaller area than the current London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Most of the corpses weren't found within the MBoH. In addition, the official area that London covered was far smaller pre-1 Ap 65 than afterwards, so not all of them were discovered in what was then London, let alone in any past or present definition of Hammersmith. Jim Michael (talk) 09:35, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Agree with previous objection. 'Jack the Stripper' refers to the unknown perpetrator, not the murders. 'Hammersmith nude murders' is a widely used name for the murders themselves. They are also sometimes called the 'Hammersmith murders' and the 'Thames nude murders'. But they are not called the 'West London nude murders' to my knowledge, although the latter is a somewhat accurate description of the facts of the case. Incidentally, while it is true that the body of only one victim was found in Hammersmith (having probably been killed elsewhere), there are numerous other connections to Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush (within Hammersmith metropolitan borough), i.e. places lived in and frequented by victims, and in some cases where they were last seen. The opening sentence saying 'The Hammersmith nude murders was a series of six murders in West London, England...' easily addresses the point that victims were found elsewhere in west London. If necessary, this wording could be further edited to make it clear to the reader that HNM is the name for the case, not an accurate geographical description of where all the murders took place. For example, 'The Hammersmith nude murders is the name of a series of six murders in West London, England...'.Dubmill (talk) 13:06, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

It could be titled Jack the Stripper murders - then we'd be using the common name & making the article about murders rather than the killer. The Times ref calls them the current title at least once - although I can't see most of the article because it's paywalled, so I don't know which other names it does or doesn't call them as well. The many Hammersmith connections that you mention should be stated in the article, because as it stands it makes no sense to our readers that 6-8 murders are named after the area that only 1 was found in. Had only 1 of Peter Sutcliffe's murders taken place in Yorkshire, he wouldn't have become known as the Yorkshire Ripper. Jim Michael (talk) 13:46, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure that a single article in the Times in 2006 should have any influence on the article title. The only other article on the subject that's available online from The Times is from 2019 and refers to the HNMs. --John B123 (talk) 15:56, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

As there has been no further discussion or support for the move to West London nude murders, I've moved the article back to Hammersmith nude murders and added is the name of to the opening sentence as suggested above. --John B123 (talk) 17:40, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

References