Royal Stopover in Lowell – (PIP #79)

By Louise Peloquin

     Lowell has welcomed many celebrities over the last two centuries. Charles Dickens’s 1842 visit is probably the best known. Eileen Loucraft provided a list of US Presidents who have passed through town. (1)

     The following piece offers a peek of a princely stopover in Lowell.

L’Étoile – Front page headline, October 23, 1924

THE PRINCE OF WALES HERE (2)

The Prince of Wales passed through Lowell

     He arrived from Montreal at 10 AM sharp – A crowd of 5000 people, four fifths of them members of the fair sex, cheered Prince Charming for 10 minutes.

Prince of Wales

THE PRINCE THEN LEAVES FOR HAMILTON, MASS.

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     This morning, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales received a brief but pleasant reception during his passage in Lowell where almost 5,000 people cheered when he disembarked from his special convoy at the Middlesex Street station.

     The special train carrying His Highness and his suite left Montreal at about midnight and arrived in Lowell at 10 o’clock sharp. The Prince, accompanied by four people from Hamilton, Mass. and escorted by agent Frank Brown and three Boston & Maine special agents, got off the train and were cheered for 5 or 10 minutes.

     The local police authorities had set up the necessary preparations to contain the crowd around the station. When he got off the train, Prince Charming stopped for a few moments before getting into the automobile waiting for him, thus allowing photographers to snap a few shots. He was then escorted by Deputy Hugh Downey and a squad of police officers on motorcycles as well as by constabulary officers.

     The motorcade passed through Middlesex, Central, Church and Andover Streets up to Shawsheen and then headed for the road to Topsfield, Middleton and Hamilton where the Bayard Tuckerman family will host him for a few days. Local agents escorted him to the city limits while the constabulary officers accompanied him to Hamilton.

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1) Dick Howe begins his April 1, 2012, piece on “Presidential visits to Lowell” by stating:

“My recent article in the local history section of Howl in Lowell (Andrew Jackson, Charles Dickens and Lowell) told the story of visits to Lowell by President Andrew Jackson in 1833 and English novelist Charles Dickens in 1842. My story prompted Eileen Loucraft to compile a list of all US Presidents who have visited Lowell through the years, either as president, before being elected president, or after serving as president.”

This link provides the list:

https://richardhowe.com/2012/04/01/presidential-visits-to-lowell/

2) In 1924, the Prince of Wales was Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, eldest son of King George V and Queen Mary. He became King Edward VIII on January 20, 1936 and, after his abdication in December of the same year, was known as the Duke of Windsor.

3) Translation by Louise Peloquin.