Is This Her Story of a Suicide?
Images Seem to Illustrate a Much-discussed 1902 Incident
By Bernie Zelitch, executive director
On April 23, 1902, an unmarried 38-year-old Lowell carpenter and church organist was discovered drowned near the Six Arch railroad bridge on the Concord River.
August Pihl was said to be “one of the best known men among the Swedes of Lowell” four days earlier when the Daily Courier reported him missing in a suspected suicide.
From her personal effects found after her death, we know Annie Powell sold images to postcard publishers. I regularly purchase images from ephemera dealers when I suspect the photographer to be Annie. This week, an image arrived from California, which, I believe, likely depicts the 1902 tragedy. In the postcard are hallmarks of her style such as heavy retouching and an interest in omens of death, like dark, shadowy, blurred figures.
Today, the bridge, still used by trains, can be seen on the right when travelling south on Rt. 495 passing the Concord River. On the image enlargement, the four individuals appear to be hand-drawn: one person is pictured leaning over looking down into the water, next to three misshapen heads as if a sprouting from one shadowy body. The coarse resolution of the postcard makes the image unclear, but if you look closely, below the bridge in the darkness of the furthest arch, there seems to be a canoe with possibly a woman in a white blouse and wide-brimmed hat.
There are multiple versions of the postcard, some having more red ink, especially on the riverbank and around the silhouetted people. Indeed, this is reminiscent of a postcard taken about the same time at the Yorick Club. In December, I discussed the Yorick Club in an article which supposes this may represent Shakespeare’s famous scene where the gravedigger uncovers the skull of Yorick, the court jester.
I have studied several thousand Lowell postcards from that era and none indicate the year of publication or photographer. Nevertheless, the one in question shows strong links to the Pihl suicide event.
We know both images were taken before 1904 when a souvenir book published both the Yorick Club and Six Arches images in Views of Lowell and Vicinity, published by L. H. Nelson Co. in Portland, Maine. Note the online edition has a 1905 date but bAP owns a copy with the 1904 date. The postcard versions of each of the images have two versions, one with little red cast, and the other with a prominent amount of red, which may intend to suggest blood. The version below is the red version: red in the sky above the subjects and the bridge, red on the side of the bridge, and pink going to dark red on the river bank.
“The bridge was not injured,” reads the caption in the above image from 1904. This is a distinctively British idiom for inanimate structures. In this case, a native American English speaker would say, “not damaged.” And all newspaper references call the landmark “Six Arch Bridge.” A West Yorkshire linguist told me that The “Six Circle Bridge” title in the caption, may be a regionalism derived from the observation that some bridge arches create circular reflections in the water below.
Annie grew up in West Yorkshire, England, arriving in Lowell in 1891 at age 31. In the captions in Views of Lowell, I have counted six instances of British spellings or idioms, listing two in the caption above.
Clearly, the suicide was the talk of the town, but we can speculate that Annie also knew the victim personally. The Pihl’s were said to be the largest Swedish family in Lowell (Olof A. Berntson, A Short History of the Swedes in Lowell, Mass., 1857–1916 and the Pedigrees of the Pihl Family, in America, 1917). Annie’s next door neighbor on S. Whipple St. was a member of the Pihl clan and another member of the Pihl family co-owned a nearby dairy store. Finally, I attribute to Annie two striking portraits taken at that time of Adelaide Pihl Thomasson, her sister, Louise Pihl, and her husband, Anders Thomasson. (The photos with slightly different views are owned privately and by Lowell Historical Society.)
In a cruel coincidence, 30 years later near the same bridge Annie’s oldest sister committed suicide.
The Six Arch Bridge as it appears today. It supports the MBTA Lowell commuter rail.
Throughout Annie’s work, we see tableaus that may give us clues into her spiritual beliefs about death. Surely these images had personal meanings to which we are not privy. But sometimes we can associate an image with an event in fiction or history.
Published in our newsletter 1/24/2025
Click here for our free weekly newsletter.
