In our modern age, we have lived through natural disasters and floods in various
parts of the world, and no matter what, they are always tragic.
But tragic floods are not always a cause of nature. In episode seven,
we discussed the Great Molasses flood that occurred in Boston and the ensuing devastation of
that event. Well, today we'll be taking a look at a similar,
albeit less gloopy, tidal wave of destruction that occurred one hundred years before that
one. And as much as any of us may love a beer every now
and then and dream of swimming in a pool of the bubbly liquid, this
tragic event was unfortunately no laughing matter. These are the bizarre but true stories
from history and in some way involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and
this is the fantastic history of food. It's late afternoon on the seventeenth of
October eighteen fourteen. Men and women are rushing about the streets of London,
just like they would any other day of their lives. To them and the
general population as a whole, nothing seemed particularly remarkable about this day. Ducking
down one of the alleys, a small boy on an errand from his mother
passes an enormous twenty five foot high wall that to him seems like it stretches
all the way to the sky. He marvels at it for a moment and
then continues on his way. This mammoth facade just happened to be one of
the boundary walls of the vast Bainbridge Street Mew Brewery, in the heart of
London's Irish enclave. The brewery, which had been founded during the early years
of King George the Third's reign, had become particularly famous for its porters,
of which it produced more than one hundred thousand barrels each year. It was
by this time one of the two largest breweries in London, having been purchased
in eighteen o nine by Sir Henry Meu, who had transformed the old Horseshoe
Brewery into the now thriving namesake. Mew came from a brewing family and had
chosen to simply follow in his father's footsteps. His father, Sir Richard MW,
had previously owned a brewery of his own called the Griffin Brewery, in
which he had constructed the largest beer vat in London at the time, capable
of holding twenty thousand barrels by itself. This enormous vat had proven so useful
to his father that Henry Mew decided to build one of his own that stood
almost over twenty feet tall and was capable of holding around eighteen thousand barrels of
the bubbling porter. Now to build a that of this size was no mean
feat, and besides the sheer amount of reinforced woodertook to create the barrel sides,
they would also need a significant reinforcement around the vat to make sure that
it held its shape even under pressure, and so to create the iron hoops
used to strengthen the vat, they needed eighty one metric tons of metal.
The porter inside the vats was left to age for anywhere from a few months
to a full year, and notably, the longer that it was left,
the more pressure would build up inside of them. George Creek had been an
employee of the brewery for the past seventeen years, and during that time had
watched in amazement as the brewery had grown larger and larger, until it was
now the second biggest producer of porter in the city. He was a diligent
man for the most part, and in his role as storehouse clerk, it
was his job to inspect the barrels and the vats of beer on a daily
basis, making sure that all was in order and that there were no leaks
or cracks that could drain away the beer inside. On this particular day,
the sun was already on its descent towards the horizon. At around four thirty
p m. In the afternoon, George Creek, as was his routine,
unlocked the heavy iron lock on the doors to the storehouse and began meandering through
the vessels inside, inspecting each one as he went. He climbed up onto
a walkway above the vats and inspected the triple story high wooden containers to see
that all was well. Approaching one of the last ones in the line,
he noticed that one of the metal hoops on one of the vats, which
alone weighed over seven hundred pounds, had slipped from its place around the enormous
cask of beer that just so happened to be storing a ten month old batch
of Porter. Now, this vat had been filled right up to the very
brim of the enormous container, leaving just four inches spare at the top.
With twenty two feet of beer below it. Now in the moment, George
didn't panic when he saw this, and in fact didn't even really think too
much of it, as this sort of thing happened a few times each year
without consequence, But being the diligent sort of man that he was, he
still made a point of reporting it to his superiors, who, like him,
weren't overly concerned by the news. His boss told him not to worry
and that quote no harm whatsoever would ensue, before instructing him to write a
letter to another employee of the brewery requesting that the hoop be repaired and replaced
at a later date. Little did any of them know that inside that very
cask of ten month old porter, the pressure from the fermentation process was growing
at an alarming rate. A little over an hour after George Creek had first
noticed the missing hoop, he found himself inside his office in the middle of
writing out the note that would request the repair for the giant mental hoop.
In what was an otherwise fairly silent warehouse that stored the vast quantities of beer,
any sound echoed throughout the cavernous chamber, and so it was when George
first heard a loud pop from somewhere in the depths of the storehouse before he
had time to react. Another sound followed quickly after, but this time it
was a roaring noise, explosive in both sound and force, and George,
knowing what was happening, threw himself to the floor beneath his desk, just
moments earlier, on the vat that was missing one of its immense hoops.
The pressure had continued building and building to a point where the enormous container could
no longer remain structurally intact. Within seconds, the three story high cask exploded
outwards, shattering the wooden supports into mere splinters. From this vat alone burst
forth the equivalent of one million pints of beer. The force of the blast
blew off the valve of a nearby cask, which spewed out its own contents
towards its neighboring cask, setting off a deadly chain reaction as vat after vat
was crushed under the hundreds of tons of liquid, smashing everything within its path.
The storehouse itself could not contain the violent tsunami of liquid and crumbled in
its wake. In fact, the force of The explosion had been so immense
that bricks from the st Storehouse building had been sent flying hundreds of meters into
the air and came subsequently raining down on to the rooftops of the houses on
the nearby Great Russell Street. The liquid, having burst through the storehouse walls,
didn't even stop to slow down as it toppled the twenty five foot high
perimeter wall and crashed into the Tavistock Arms Pub. Inside was a young teenage
bar maid named Eleanor Cooper, who was unluckily caught beneath the rubble as the
building collapsed around her like something out of a fever dream. An enormous fifteen
foot high wave of porter swept through the streets and alleyways of the surrounding neighborhood,
taking with it anything that wasn't nailed down. The city had not yet
installed proper drainage systems into the streets, and so the tidal wave of black
liquid had nowhere else to go except around or through local homes. Residents who
for the most part had never learned to swim, clambered onto dining room tables
or any other furniture that would save them from drowning. In the swirling black
mass that threatened to engulf them. Basements and makeshift housings surrounding the brewery were
either washed away or crushed under the deluge, but it was on New Street
where the most significant damage occurred. Hannah Banfield and her daughter Mary were swept
away in the middle of their tea, both unfortunately drowning in the river of
beer in what was surely the most horrific twist of fate. Inside of a
cellar nearby, five mourners had gathered to hold awake for a two year old
boy who had died the day before. They had no time to escape as
the beer flooded into the subterranean space and took their lives in a matter of
seconds. Between them Elinor Cooper and the Banfields, eight people had already lost
their lives to this tragedy. Within just a few minutes, however, the
deafening roar of the flooding beer became eerily silent once again. The surrounding neighborhoods,
already soaked in poverty, were now saturated in hot malt liquor. The
silence was soon shattered by screams and cries for help from those trapped inside the
nearby buildings. Rescuers wasted no time in getting to the source of the cries,
wading through still waist deep beer in some sections and picking through the tangled
debris that had been left behind. Soon onlookers and gawkhas from surrounding neighborhoods came
flooding into the area to see what the noise had been. Rescuers shouted at
them to keep quiet so they could better hear the cries for help that floated
out of the ruined buildings. London's Morning Post put it this way, the
surrounding scene of desolation presents a most awful and terrific appearance, equal to that
which fire or earthquake may be supposed to occasion. In the days following the
event, rumors began circulating throughout London and beyond of people rushing to the area
to fill up tubs and buckets of beer, taking it home for later enjoyment,
and even stories of men drinking it straight from the streets in an uncontrolled
mass drunken revelry. The stories even went so far as to claim that another
death had occurred from the beer flood, but this time due to alcohol.
Poisoning from the man's over indulgence on the streets, and while it is possible
that this happened, and most certainly is a likely event, knowing human's propensity
to grab at anything free, there are no reliable sources to confirm whether or
not this truly occurred. Perhaps surprisingly, all of the brewery employees who had
been closest to the incidents had survived relatively unharmed, with the superintendent and three
workers needing to be rescued from the rubble. The brewery itself, however,
was not quite so lucky. The incident not only severely tarnished its reputation but
structurally put it on the point of bankruptcy. In what was seen as a
contentious verdict, the coroner's inquest ruled the tragedy an act of God rather than
negligence on the part of the brewery, and in so doing meant that they
would not have to pay any compensation for the disaster. But the company would
not have been able to pay anyway, as after the loss of millions of
gallons of porter, the damage to their own buildings, and the replacement cost
of the vats, they were in debt of around twenty three thousand pounds,
which in today's money would be almost two point three million pounds. Utilizing connections
they had in Parliament, they successfully petitioned the Crown to help bail them out,
receiving seven two hundred and fifty pounds, just enough to save them from
declaring bankruptcy, and after the chaos had died down, the Horseshoe Brewery went
back into business before moving to the Nine Elms Brewery in Wandsworth. On the
old brewery site now stands the famous Dominion Theatre in what is today London's West
End. As a lingering legacy of this tragedy, enormous wooden vats were soon
phased out, to be replaced by lined concrete vessels with a significantly higher capacity
to withstand pressure build up. The tragedy left an indelible mark on the community
and especially on the families of those who lost their lives. For months,
the sickly sweet smell of the malt liquor hung in the air as an inescapable
and constant reminder to all of what had happened on that faithful day in eighteen
fourteen. This show is made entirely by me Nick Charlie key, with our
theme music having been made by the Enigma that is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
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So until next time, bonte a petite