The Tragedy on the Beach
A grim discovery near a logging camp raises questions of foul play in 1876 Seattle.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Some men came up from Jewett’s logging camp, some ten miles north of Seattle, yesterday, and reported the discovery near their camp of the body of a man lying on the beach. The skull of the man was broken in two places and the nose and most of the face was gone. All the rest of the body was in an excellent state of preservation, and there were no signs of it having pounded on the beach. The man was, as near as they could judge, about 5 feet, 8 inches, in height and rather slight built and appeared to be in the neighborhood of 25 years of age. He was dressed in a pair of dungaree pants, a heavy woolen shirt, worn outside of his pants and belted in with a very broad belt, and low shoes. A small sum of money was found in his pockets and was taken charge of by the men who found him. From the description there appears to be no doubt that it is Mr. A. E. Hoyle, who disappeared from this place just previous to the sailing of the Salvador, one night about 6 weeks ago, and who was supposed to have fallen overboard and drowned. The general impression now is, that there has been foul play, but nothing can be asserted positively until the evidence of surgeons on the inquest determines whether the wounds on his head were inflicted before or after death. The sloop Tibbals was chartered and went down last night to bring the body up to town, and it is expected to arrive here some time this evening.
“The general impression now is, that there has been foul play, but nothing can be asserted positively until the evidence of surgeons on the inquest determines whether the wounds on his head were inflicted before or after death.”
This 1876 report highlights the transient and often perilous nature of labor in the Pacific Northwest's early industrial era. Much like today, where the struggle for identification and safety in the margins of society remains a civic burden, the 'hushed' mystery of a man lost to the sound echoes the isolation of those working in our region's remote natural resource sectors.
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