This custom-made volume contains newspaper clippings that follow the investigation of and trials for the murder of Lillian "Lilla" Hoyle of Webster, Massachusetts, on September 1, 1887. The unresolved case involved abortion, accusations of incest, and speculation and sensationalism in press reporting. The unknown compiler carefully mounted each clipping in hand-cut windows on heavier stock paper. They created a calligraphic title page, "Detailed account of the Murder of Lilla Hoyle, Webster Mass", with "Worcester Mass 1887" at the bottom of that page. It also contains two original portrait photographs, one of Lilla Hoyle and the other of her sister Alice Hoyle. Spine title: "THE CASE OF LILLA HOYLE".
Lillian A. Hoyle was born on July 7, 1865, to parents William E. and Margaret R. Hoyle. The family lived in Webster, Worcester County, Massachusetts. Her father was a shoemaker, originally from Connecticut and her mother was born in Ireland. Lillian (or Lillie, or Lilla) had at least four siblings, including older brothers that worked in the shoe factory with their father and a younger sister, Alice M. Hoyle. After their parents' deaths (in the early 1870s and in 1883), the sisters moved together into a Webster tenement owned by their uncle Dixon R. Cowie. The apartment was located over Lilla Hoyle's place of employment, Taylor's restaurant and ice cream parlor in Webster.
On September 1, 1887, Lilla Hoyle disappeared from her home. Nineteen days later, Charles Shumway found her body wedged in rafters of a corn crib about two and a half miles from Webster. Postmortem examination revealed that she was seven months pregnant and that she likely died during or following an abortion operation (oil of tansy being found in Hoyle's digestive system). The circumstances and suspects in her murder case, and ensuing trials became widespread in newspapers. Lilla's sister Alice provided different and conflicting testimony, though in May 1888 Thomas B. McQuaid and Dixon Cowie were arrested largely on her confessions. Alice claimed that her sister was an intimate of McQuaid. Dixon was suspected of incest and then murder. Both scenarios involved either Lilla's refusal to have an abortion or her suffering a botched abortion. With Alice Hoyle's unreliable testimony, both men were released on November 17, 1888, and the case never resolved.
