November 29, 2018 • 25 mins
In 1814, a poor neighborhood in London fell victim to a strange, tragic and boozy disaster -- this calamity would eventually leave eight people dead. So what exactly happened? How could an entire neighborhood flood with a deadly deluge of beer? Tune in to find out.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
You know, I guess we should begin today's episode by
pointing out that it is not, to our knowledge, sponsored
by Miller Lite. Although we had a lot of fun
with those guys. You had the best tagline of all times.
I'm really surprised they haven't like purchased this from you.
You know, it was a gift. We're just very giving
people on this show, and that is the gift that
keeps on giving in social media form. And I don't
(00:46):
know if they'll ever give us any more ads again.
But what was it again? Then? Uh, Miller Lite. The
beer is so good that you can drink it with
your mouth, and I think that we arrived at that
on our earlier episode about ritual alcohol enemas or ak A.
You're not gonna say it. You're not gonna say it.
I tried to make you say last time. That was
a sore spot. But chugging is the word chugging. Today
(01:08):
we're talking about a different kind of chugging, chugging, chugging
it to the streets. Yes, yes, taking into the streets.
That's well put. Uh, I'm ben oh, I'm null. And
we are of course joined with our super producer Casey
Pegram give it up for and fellow ridiculous historians. Our
journey today takes us to the early eighteen hundreds in
(01:33):
foggy Old London Town October, specifically when a bizarre sequence
of events through the community of St Giles, London into
a state of pand ammonium and terror. What happened and
how did this come to pass? Okay, so let's set
(01:53):
the scene. He already did. Foggy London Town eighteen fourteen. Uh,
there's a brewery, right, There's a brewery called the Horseshoe
Brewery which was located at the corner of Great Russell
Street and Tottenham Court Roads. The Horseshoe Brewery was the building.
It was like this historic brewery and the mu and
Company brewers I guess had taken it over or they
(02:15):
were the ones occupying it at this time, and they
had a They were all about being up to the
latest technological brewing standards, which at the time where giant
wooden vats secured with these iron rings like a giant
barrel basically right, yeah, yeah, these giant barrels girdled with
(02:37):
heavy iron hoops. And this was sort of a a
fad or a trend for breweries at the time, the
vats were meant to be displayed to visitors, right, They
were meant to be a show stopping spectacle and to
impress potential customers. So there was this kind of one
(02:59):
ups ship contest wherein different breweries would try to build
progressively larger vats and barrels. And you just said how
how big these were? To put it in another perspective,
there three stories tall, and as you said, they're built
of wood with just some hoops around them, very heavy
(03:20):
iron hoops for structural integrity. Yeah. And um, let's not
forget the type of beer that was being brewed. Here
was something akin to a stout, like a dark porter ale,
which was very popular at the time. Um, and this
vat would hold three thousand, five hundred barrels of this
brown stuff. And everything is fine for years, for like
(03:43):
four years, everything is fine until it isn't. On October fourteen,
in this area of St. Giles, which we should mention
as a poor area of London, several things are happening.
There is a woman named and Seville who is mourning
the tragic death of her two year old son, John,
(04:04):
who had just died the day earlier. On October six,
and she is mourning in her seller apartment. A lot
of people live in basements in this area. And then upstairs,
on the first floor of this tenement on New Street,
a lady named Mary Banfield is sitting down for tea
with her daughter Hannah, who is four. And then across
(04:28):
across the way or nearby, there is a fourteen year
old named Eleanor Cooper at the Tavistock Arms public House
who's scouring pots. Teenage barmaid. A teenage barmaid, yeah, her
scullery maid. At the very least. She is by this
outdoor water pump that's right next to a brick wall
that's about twenty five ft high. And the brewery that
(04:50):
you mentioned a um that that you described for us
earlier is directly on the other side of that barrier.
They're famous for this porter that you mentioned, and they
produced more than one hundred thousand barrels of this each year.
It was big business. And around four thirty pm that day,
(05:10):
a storehouse clerk named George Crick looks at one of
these huge wooden vats and he's looking at it from
above right, and as he's staring down, he notices something's off.
One of those hoops, which weighs seven hundred pounds, has
slipped off a cask and the porter that storing is
(05:32):
ten months old. Crick has been with the company for
almost two decades, and he knew that this kind of thing,
the slippage of the hoop could happen maybe once the
three times a year, and he didn't think too much
of it. He was just like, sometimes things happen. Were
they not doing proper maintenance on this monstrosity. It's hard
(05:55):
to say, man, you know, they must have had to
do some sort of regular maintenance just because it's would Yeah,
but I imagine that like safety and you know, health
inspections wasn't really much of a thing back in these days,
so that's probably like left their own devices a little bit.
But yeah, so that one who pops off, and you
can imagine like what we're talking like maybe like eight
of these hoops for the giant cask, right, So that's
(06:18):
significantly weakening it structurally, and then um, the other hoops
start to kind of follow suit, or at least the
I don't know, it starts to weaken the entire thing.
It's like a domino effect on this right, Yeah, that's
a good way to put it. So George Creek goes
ahead and fills up the vat all the way almost
(06:41):
to the top, almost to the brim, I think four
inches away from the top, and this like more than
high way. He sees the thing pop off, and then
he's just like a screw it and still sees that
it's slipped. At this point, it slipped, and he told
his boss about it, and his boss said that quote
new home whatever would inceed and sounds like a real
(07:01):
villainous type. I can't help a picture him as such.
And he told Craig. He was just like, George, you
should write a letter to another guy who works at
the brewery and they can fix it later, but we'll
be fine for now. Don't worry about it. And then, uh,
Craig sits down and he he's filled up the vat.
He writes this letter and it's it's about five thirty
(07:23):
when he finishes writing the letter, and then he hears
a massive explosion. Yeah, yeah, a massive explosion that set
forth all of those thousands of barrels of this. It
was hot actually, because it was mid ferment right, just gushing,
(07:45):
and it was so forceful that it actually took out
a wall in the brewery that allowed it to continue
to flood into the streets of that area where he's cribing.
And not to mention that as it went it took
out the other casks that were around as well. They
(08:06):
may have not held the same volume total, but added
up together made for a whole another problem. Right exactly
so that large barrier we mentioned earlier, where the fourteen
year old Eleanor Cooper is working, that wall collapses, it
kills her instantly. The sheer force of this explosion sends
(08:26):
bricks flying through the air across Great Russell Street, and
a deluge of beer rushes through the neighborhood. And it's
sweeping away like this is an actual flood. It's sweeping
away everything in its path. Well, this is like three
d and twenty plus thousand gallons of beer. Yeah, and
(08:48):
that one, that first vat alone held the equivalent of
one million pints of beer. Jesus. And again, as as
we said just a moment ago, that wasn't the only
vat that went, and there was no drainage. We should
mention that on these city streets, there's not like a
sewage system have we talked about the great Stink of London, Ben,
I think we have. Remember how nasty that city was
(09:10):
pre sewage system. You know, it was just the streets
were literally caked in human excrement, and so this beer
is washing all that along with it. People are getting
swept up in the flood. Can you imagine the smell.
It must have been disgusted. I mean, think about how
it smells like downtown Atlanta or somewhere like Little five Points,
like after like a weekend. You know, it just smells
(09:31):
like pea and stale beer, or just outside of our
building building. It's true, this must have been that like
to the mph power, and it happens so quickly it's
difficult for us to fully articulate how quickly this occurs.
People who live in the neighborhood are losing their minds.
They're screaming zoie and what dot, and they're hopping up
(09:54):
on pieces of furniture. They're trying to save themselves from drowning,
which was a real possibility because this flood was so
strong and so forceful that some of the houses that
were in disrepair crumbled themselves. So your house could fall
on you, all right, here's where it gets gross. Okay,
(10:19):
it's already pretty gross at this point, but um, a
lot of the folks were trying to, you know, make
this see the silver lining in this situation. And you know,
likely they were alcoholics because they were just like, hey,
free beer. So they would get like whatever receptacle they
get their hands on, a bucket or whatever and start
scooping this stuff up and drinking it. And some people
(10:40):
just lapped it up off the street. And again, lots
of poop mixed in with this beer at this lots
of lots of poop to try this road dirt road kill. Yeah,
and let's also not forget that this beer was mid fermentation,
so it wasn't even done. Yeah, it was even like
beer beer. So where are we fatality wise at this point? Ben,
(11:01):
As this deluge makes us way through St. Giles Rookery,
another area where I believe some of the city's poorest
we're living. Um, and this is another very sad detail here, Ben.
This happened during the day, so the men would have
been away at work. So the folks that were at
home that would have experience the brunt of this beer
(11:22):
nami would have been children and women right exactly. Let's
explore some of the fatalities. So we mentioned the unfortunate
end of fourteen year old barmaid Eleanor Cooper. She died
pretty quickly, near instantly as far as we can tell.
But let's also revisit some of the characters we introduced
(11:45):
earlier in the story. And Seville, who was mourning again
the death of her two year old son John, was
holding a wake in their basement apartment when the beer
flood hit. They had no time or no way to
get out, so Seville, along with the other three mourners
(12:09):
were all killed by by this beer. And then the
couple that we had mentioned, the mom and daughter having
tea on the first floor of their tenement, Mary Benfield
and her four year old daughter Hannah, they both passed away.
So this this gets us up to let's see Eleanor,
(12:30):
the four mourners, Mary and Hannah. This gets us up
to seven fatalities in a matter of minutes. But that's
not all. There was one more fatality right now. Yeah,
and this is probably a direct result of these booze
scoopers that were talking about earlier that were just you know,
chugging the stuff from the streets, hence my opening phrase
(12:50):
chugging into the streets. And apparently this last death was
alcohol poisoning, and not not to make light, but you know,
it's sort of like you did it to yourself, buddy,
you escaped the act will del use that all of
these innocence you know, we're subjected to, and then you went,
You went and drank yourself to death like a jerk.
Because isn't like half fermented booze dangerous. Isn't it like
(13:11):
ethanol really strong or something like? Oh, I don't know,
I thought so, I know, like moonshine, if you drink
it before it's finished or something like that, it can
be really really dangerous. But I don't know if that applies.
I'm just spit on here. But do we know know
whether or not that was intentional alcohol poisoning? You know
what I mean? Were they just trying not to drown
and they managed to not drown? Interesting? But they unclear?
(13:34):
But uncle, I don't know. I just want to just
not that they need me to defend them, but possibly,
I though I don't want to sound too cynical about it,
I'm tempted to think it's the first idea you proposed,
and that they just drink themselves to death. There could
have been more deaths, more fatalities. It's pretty astonishing in fact,
(13:56):
that so few people died as a result of this
flood this which is say earlier beer nami, like the
worst damage does occur there on New Street, and now
this neighborhood is soaked in beer. Everything stinks. People are
(14:17):
covered in hot malt liquor. Three brewery employees almost died,
but they were luckily pulled from this temporary raging river
and people rescuers arrived on the scene and they were
trying with their bare hands to go through the rubble
and find anyone who is trapped inside, and they had to.
(14:37):
They were in a really weird situation because people are
losing their minds, wailing and screaming, and they're like, you
have to be quiet because we're trying to hear people
in the rubble. Yeah, it's a real scene, ben Um,
And surprise, surprise, this story doesn't have a happy ending
on on multiple levels, on the corporate level, right on
(14:58):
the corporate greed and corrupt and level, there's some real
palm grease and going on here, and some shady backroom
deals that caused, uh, the responsible parties being the brewers,
to kind of get away scott free. And remember Ben,
you mentioned houses were lost, foundations were wrecked, homes were
(15:21):
crumbled because of this. This was that much beer. Can
you believe it? It blows my mind that it would
have kept that momentum going long enough to actually damage
people's properties. I can't even picture the sheer volume of stinking,
brown hot booze. And yeah, this does have a maybe
sobering it's not the right word for this episode, but
(15:42):
it's funny. There is a sobering aspect to this story,
which is that this community was largely composed of Irish
immigrants and newspapers in the establishment at the time very
much looked down on immigrants from Ireland, and the company
that own the brewery eventually did just fine. Because you
(16:03):
would think they would take an enormous financial hit right
from losing literally all of their inventory, killing eight people,
and destroying a neighborhood. But they initially thought they were
going to be in tough times because they had already
paid the excise taxes on the booze. But somehow they
got Parliament to give them a pass and they got
(16:25):
their money back. Yeah. Not only that they got um
Parliament or whatever governing body was overseeing this thing, UH
to rule the disaster. The collapse of this cask as
an act of God, an unavoidable act of God, meaning
no mortal entity could be held responsible, and meaning no
(16:47):
mortal UH got a dime. Right, And this was only
two days after the flood. Jury convened to investigate the accident.
They visited the side of the tragedy, They viewed the
corpses of the victims. They heard testimony from Crick we
mentioned earlier, and as you said, no, they said this
had been an act of God and that the victims
(17:10):
had met their death casually, accidentally, and by misfortune. I
would agree with the last part. I would. It was
definitely a serious case of misfortune. And there was a
lot of speculation about the court being corrupt or bribed,
but there was never an official statement made, and the
(17:32):
brewery soldiered on for a long time, for more than
a century. It wasn't until that it was demolished and
they built something called the Dominion Theater on part of
the site. In two thousand and twelve, there was a
pub in the area. The whole born whippet that's began
marking the Great Beer Flood of eighteen fourteen with a
(17:56):
vat of porter brewed especially for the day, which to
me feels like it's impoor taste. I'm just gonna go
on the record and say that I would agree with
you on the record. So another strange aspect of this
story is that this is not the only strange beverage flood.
(18:18):
I think do we ever mention the Great Molasses Flood.
I don't know if we've done a full episode on it,
but there's definitely a parallel. It's like the American equivalent, yeah,
of this, because I don't know there's ever been another
booze flood kind of like this because they switched after this,
This did bring about some change in the brewing process
where they changed it to concrete casks as opposed to
these shoddy, you know, rickety wooden cast But what's the
(18:40):
Great Molasses Flood? Because it's great as well. We were
talking off air about how it's funny when we have
a date and then the Great a thing, implying there
may have been lesser versions of that, the mediocre beer flood. Yeah,
so the Great Molasses Flood also known as the Boston
Molasses Disaster, occurred in January of nineteen nine teen, when
(19:00):
a huge storage tank of molasses burst, causing molasses to
rush through the streets at like thirty five miles an hour.
Fifty people were injured, twenty one people died. And then
there was the Honolulu Molasses spill, which happened in two
thousand thirteen. So this stuff isn't just ancient history. Luckily,
(19:20):
no humans as far as we know, passed away in
that molasses spill, but it did tremendous damage to the
maritime environment. And then there's one other one. I just
like the name. I don't know if you've heard this name.
No one want to see what you think about it.
The Pepsi fruit Juice Flood. That sounds like a drink,
that sounds like a really cool band. He he has
(19:41):
going to see the Pepsi fruit juice Flood. Red Rocks.
I caught him in Bonnaroo. You know, I just I
love their live work. They've taken a different direction on
the new album. Yeah, the Pepsi Fruit Juice Flood, which
I feel like they might put out his a beverage.
One day was a flood of twenty eight million liters
(20:03):
of fruit and vegetable juice into the streets of a
town in Russia called Lebedian, and it was caused by
the collapse of PepsiCo warehouse. UH No deaths resulted from
the spill, but there were two injuries and the streets
were awash with pineapple, apricot, tangerine, grape, mango, pomegranate, apple, cherry, orange, grapefruit,
(20:25):
and tomato juice. So if you're going to make a
commemorative drink for that, those would be the ingredients. And
I think that would taste pretty nasty, right, it does
seem so that doesn't seem like a very good combination
of flavors. It's like, I did you ever drink V eight?
I like the it splash, but no, not like tomato juice.
If that's what you're asking me, what I'm drink clamato next? Like,
what's the difference between V eight splash and V A.
(20:47):
V A splash has like fruit juices in it. It
has just a little bit. It hides the carrot juice
in the tomato juice. It's veiled. Kids like to drink it.
It's a tasty juice beverage well, you know what, maybe
I'll give it a shot. Well, I have never tried
V eight nor V eight splash have I experience in
all life unlived? No, but it takes. I mean, you
know you you're You've got your path, I got your story.
(21:11):
You know doesn't have to include V eight. Thanks man.
You drink other beverages that you know that I don't.
I don't drink like, uh, milk, I don't drink milk.
You don't drink milk, no nut milk. I feel like
milk is an ingredient. We actually we had this conversation
before with one of our coworkers, a great guy, Paul Deckant,
(21:32):
who also has the nickname Mission Control, and he is
definitely a fan of drinking milk. Wouldn't you say so? Caseys,
Have you guys had that conversation about milk as an
ingredient versus a beverage? I mean I consume it as
a beverage too, So I'm right there with him. I
like chocolate milk. Yeah, same same, I used to Did
you guys ever hear the story? This has nothing to
(21:54):
do with a great beer flood of eighteen fourteen, But
did you guys ever hear this story of I guess
the old urban legend that chocolate milk was originally created
to hide blood clots and impurities. Delicious way to hide it. Okay, well,
Casey on the case, and this ends our tail for today.
(22:15):
Thank you so much for tuning in ridiculous historians. Thank
you super producer, Casey pegram No my friend as always,
Thank you for exploring this strange, disturbing tale. Yeah, there's
a lot going on here. It's sort of a tale
of wealth and poverty and uh, you know, the rich
running rough shod over the poor. We sort of didn't
(22:36):
only see that aspect of it until the end, but um,
it's definitely there. And it's gross. It's gross u philosophically
and also physically gross because it's hot beer rushing through
the poop laden streets of London town right washing away
children having tea parties, I know. And no one got
in trouble. No one went to jail. It's a shame,
(22:58):
but at least it did lead to better or safety standards.
That's true. Speaking of things leading to things, this is
the part of the show where we lead to the
end of the show. Nice see my seg game is
on fire. It's I'm really working on I've been saving
that one. You've been putting in the work. You can
find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook,
you can find us on Twitter, but more importantly, you
can find us and your fellow Ridiculous Historians on our
(23:21):
Facebook community page, Ridiculous Historians. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
There's some good conversation there, some good memory, some good history, weirdness,
good conversation. Already said that all of those things. You
can find it right there, go to Ridiculous Historians. All
you have to do is like name one of our
names or something. And even if you just like make
up something clever, we'll we'll let you in. If it's funny,
we'll let you in totally. We'd like to thank our
(23:42):
research associate Gabe, who helped us out with this one. Um.
We'd also like to thank our buddy Alex Williams, who
composed this theme. Do you think he even knows that
we include a thank you to him in every episode?
Him to him? He had nodded. He's a very demure
kind of dude. Yeah, oh what our comic book recommendation.
Comic book recommendation for today, This one might be a
(24:04):
little on the nose. UM. But I had a friend
tell me how I got the movie version of Watchman
all wrong, how I need to go back and watch
it again. UM. I have not done that yet, but
I really felt like it kind of missed the mark
of what that comic was all about. UM, So I
really recommend going back and revisiting not the movie Watchman,
but the incredible seminal graphic novel Watchman by Alan Moore. UM. Watchman.
(24:28):
I also, oddly enough, have an Alan Moore recommendation that
I was thinking about Providence. Providence is the is this
story of a writer who explores the world of HP Lovecraft,
this guy who kind of who wants to mean HP Lovecraft.
It has all these weird experiences that if you like
(24:51):
HP Lovecraft, you like Alan Moore, you're gonna love this.
That's all I can say. See you next time, folks,
The Sexton Time
You know, I guess we should begin today's episode by
pointing out that it is not, to our knowledge, sponsored
by Miller Lite. Although we had a lot of fun
with those guys. You had the best tagline of all times.
I'm really surprised they haven't like purchased this from you.
You know, it was a gift. We're just very giving
people on this show, and that is the gift that
keeps on giving in social media form. And I don't
(00:46):
know if they'll ever give us any more ads again.
But what was it again? Then? Uh, Miller Lite. The
beer is so good that you can drink it with
your mouth, and I think that we arrived at that
on our earlier episode about ritual alcohol enemas or ak A.
You're not gonna say it. You're not gonna say it.
I tried to make you say last time. That was
a sore spot. But chugging is the word chugging. Today
(01:08):
we're talking about a different kind of chugging, chugging, chugging
it to the streets. Yes, yes, taking into the streets.
That's well put. Uh, I'm ben oh, I'm null. And
we are of course joined with our super producer Casey
Pegram give it up for and fellow ridiculous historians. Our
journey today takes us to the early eighteen hundreds in
(01:33):
foggy Old London Town October, specifically when a bizarre sequence
of events through the community of St Giles, London into
a state of pand ammonium and terror. What happened and
how did this come to pass? Okay, so let's set
(01:53):
the scene. He already did. Foggy London Town eighteen fourteen. Uh,
there's a brewery, right, There's a brewery called the Horseshoe
Brewery which was located at the corner of Great Russell
Street and Tottenham Court Roads. The Horseshoe Brewery was the building.
It was like this historic brewery and the mu and
Company brewers I guess had taken it over or they
(02:15):
were the ones occupying it at this time, and they
had a They were all about being up to the
latest technological brewing standards, which at the time where giant
wooden vats secured with these iron rings like a giant
barrel basically right, yeah, yeah, these giant barrels girdled with
(02:37):
heavy iron hoops. And this was sort of a a
fad or a trend for breweries at the time, the
vats were meant to be displayed to visitors, right, They
were meant to be a show stopping spectacle and to
impress potential customers. So there was this kind of one
(02:59):
ups ship contest wherein different breweries would try to build
progressively larger vats and barrels. And you just said how
how big these were? To put it in another perspective,
there three stories tall, and as you said, they're built
of wood with just some hoops around them, very heavy
(03:20):
iron hoops for structural integrity. Yeah. And um, let's not
forget the type of beer that was being brewed. Here
was something akin to a stout, like a dark porter ale,
which was very popular at the time. Um, and this
vat would hold three thousand, five hundred barrels of this
brown stuff. And everything is fine for years, for like
(03:43):
four years, everything is fine until it isn't. On October fourteen,
in this area of St. Giles, which we should mention
as a poor area of London, several things are happening.
There is a woman named and Seville who is mourning
the tragic death of her two year old son, John,
(04:04):
who had just died the day earlier. On October six,
and she is mourning in her seller apartment. A lot
of people live in basements in this area. And then upstairs,
on the first floor of this tenement on New Street,
a lady named Mary Banfield is sitting down for tea
with her daughter Hannah, who is four. And then across
(04:28):
across the way or nearby, there is a fourteen year
old named Eleanor Cooper at the Tavistock Arms public House
who's scouring pots. Teenage barmaid. A teenage barmaid, yeah, her
scullery maid. At the very least. She is by this
outdoor water pump that's right next to a brick wall
that's about twenty five ft high. And the brewery that
(04:50):
you mentioned a um that that you described for us
earlier is directly on the other side of that barrier.
They're famous for this porter that you mentioned, and they
produced more than one hundred thousand barrels of this each year.
It was big business. And around four thirty pm that day,
(05:10):
a storehouse clerk named George Crick looks at one of
these huge wooden vats and he's looking at it from
above right, and as he's staring down, he notices something's off.
One of those hoops, which weighs seven hundred pounds, has
slipped off a cask and the porter that storing is
(05:32):
ten months old. Crick has been with the company for
almost two decades, and he knew that this kind of thing,
the slippage of the hoop could happen maybe once the
three times a year, and he didn't think too much
of it. He was just like, sometimes things happen. Were
they not doing proper maintenance on this monstrosity. It's hard
(05:55):
to say, man, you know, they must have had to
do some sort of regular maintenance just because it's would Yeah,
but I imagine that like safety and you know, health
inspections wasn't really much of a thing back in these days,
so that's probably like left their own devices a little bit.
But yeah, so that one who pops off, and you
can imagine like what we're talking like maybe like eight
of these hoops for the giant cask, right, So that's
(06:18):
significantly weakening it structurally, and then um, the other hoops
start to kind of follow suit, or at least the
I don't know, it starts to weaken the entire thing.
It's like a domino effect on this right, Yeah, that's
a good way to put it. So George Creek goes
ahead and fills up the vat all the way almost
(06:41):
to the top, almost to the brim, I think four
inches away from the top, and this like more than
high way. He sees the thing pop off, and then
he's just like a screw it and still sees that
it's slipped. At this point, it slipped, and he told
his boss about it, and his boss said that quote
new home whatever would inceed and sounds like a real
(07:01):
villainous type. I can't help a picture him as such.
And he told Craig. He was just like, George, you
should write a letter to another guy who works at
the brewery and they can fix it later, but we'll
be fine for now. Don't worry about it. And then, uh,
Craig sits down and he he's filled up the vat.
He writes this letter and it's it's about five thirty
(07:23):
when he finishes writing the letter, and then he hears
a massive explosion. Yeah, yeah, a massive explosion that set
forth all of those thousands of barrels of this. It
was hot actually, because it was mid ferment right, just gushing,
(07:45):
and it was so forceful that it actually took out
a wall in the brewery that allowed it to continue
to flood into the streets of that area where he's cribing.
And not to mention that as it went it took
out the other casks that were around as well. They
(08:06):
may have not held the same volume total, but added
up together made for a whole another problem. Right exactly
so that large barrier we mentioned earlier, where the fourteen
year old Eleanor Cooper is working, that wall collapses, it
kills her instantly. The sheer force of this explosion sends
(08:26):
bricks flying through the air across Great Russell Street, and
a deluge of beer rushes through the neighborhood. And it's
sweeping away like this is an actual flood. It's sweeping
away everything in its path. Well, this is like three
d and twenty plus thousand gallons of beer. Yeah, and
(08:48):
that one, that first vat alone held the equivalent of
one million pints of beer. Jesus. And again, as as
we said just a moment ago, that wasn't the only
vat that went, and there was no drainage. We should
mention that on these city streets, there's not like a
sewage system have we talked about the great Stink of London, Ben,
I think we have. Remember how nasty that city was
(09:10):
pre sewage system. You know, it was just the streets
were literally caked in human excrement, and so this beer
is washing all that along with it. People are getting
swept up in the flood. Can you imagine the smell.
It must have been disgusted. I mean, think about how
it smells like downtown Atlanta or somewhere like Little five Points,
like after like a weekend. You know, it just smells
(09:31):
like pea and stale beer, or just outside of our
building building. It's true, this must have been that like
to the mph power, and it happens so quickly it's
difficult for us to fully articulate how quickly this occurs.
People who live in the neighborhood are losing their minds.
They're screaming zoie and what dot, and they're hopping up
(09:54):
on pieces of furniture. They're trying to save themselves from drowning,
which was a real possibility because this flood was so
strong and so forceful that some of the houses that
were in disrepair crumbled themselves. So your house could fall
on you, all right, here's where it gets gross. Okay,
(10:19):
it's already pretty gross at this point, but um, a
lot of the folks were trying to, you know, make
this see the silver lining in this situation. And you know,
likely they were alcoholics because they were just like, hey,
free beer. So they would get like whatever receptacle they
get their hands on, a bucket or whatever and start
scooping this stuff up and drinking it. And some people
(10:40):
just lapped it up off the street. And again, lots
of poop mixed in with this beer at this lots
of lots of poop to try this road dirt road kill. Yeah,
and let's also not forget that this beer was mid fermentation,
so it wasn't even done. Yeah, it was even like
beer beer. So where are we fatality wise at this point? Ben,
(11:01):
As this deluge makes us way through St. Giles Rookery,
another area where I believe some of the city's poorest
we're living. Um, and this is another very sad detail here, Ben.
This happened during the day, so the men would have
been away at work. So the folks that were at
home that would have experience the brunt of this beer
(11:22):
nami would have been children and women right exactly. Let's
explore some of the fatalities. So we mentioned the unfortunate
end of fourteen year old barmaid Eleanor Cooper. She died
pretty quickly, near instantly as far as we can tell.
But let's also revisit some of the characters we introduced
(11:45):
earlier in the story. And Seville, who was mourning again
the death of her two year old son John, was
holding a wake in their basement apartment when the beer
flood hit. They had no time or no way to
get out, so Seville, along with the other three mourners
(12:09):
were all killed by by this beer. And then the
couple that we had mentioned, the mom and daughter having
tea on the first floor of their tenement, Mary Benfield
and her four year old daughter Hannah, they both passed away.
So this this gets us up to let's see Eleanor,
(12:30):
the four mourners, Mary and Hannah. This gets us up
to seven fatalities in a matter of minutes. But that's
not all. There was one more fatality right now. Yeah,
and this is probably a direct result of these booze
scoopers that were talking about earlier that were just you know,
chugging the stuff from the streets, hence my opening phrase
(12:50):
chugging into the streets. And apparently this last death was
alcohol poisoning, and not not to make light, but you know,
it's sort of like you did it to yourself, buddy,
you escaped the act will del use that all of
these innocence you know, we're subjected to, and then you went,
You went and drank yourself to death like a jerk.
Because isn't like half fermented booze dangerous. Isn't it like
(13:11):
ethanol really strong or something like? Oh, I don't know,
I thought so, I know, like moonshine, if you drink
it before it's finished or something like that, it can
be really really dangerous. But I don't know if that applies.
I'm just spit on here. But do we know know
whether or not that was intentional alcohol poisoning? You know
what I mean? Were they just trying not to drown
and they managed to not drown? Interesting? But they unclear?
(13:34):
But uncle, I don't know. I just want to just
not that they need me to defend them, but possibly,
I though I don't want to sound too cynical about it,
I'm tempted to think it's the first idea you proposed,
and that they just drink themselves to death. There could
have been more deaths, more fatalities. It's pretty astonishing in fact,
(13:56):
that so few people died as a result of this
flood this which is say earlier beer nami, like the
worst damage does occur there on New Street, and now
this neighborhood is soaked in beer. Everything stinks. People are
(14:17):
covered in hot malt liquor. Three brewery employees almost died,
but they were luckily pulled from this temporary raging river
and people rescuers arrived on the scene and they were
trying with their bare hands to go through the rubble
and find anyone who is trapped inside, and they had to.
(14:37):
They were in a really weird situation because people are
losing their minds, wailing and screaming, and they're like, you
have to be quiet because we're trying to hear people
in the rubble. Yeah, it's a real scene, ben Um,
And surprise, surprise, this story doesn't have a happy ending
on on multiple levels, on the corporate level, right on
(14:58):
the corporate greed and corrupt and level, there's some real
palm grease and going on here, and some shady backroom
deals that caused, uh, the responsible parties being the brewers,
to kind of get away scott free. And remember Ben,
you mentioned houses were lost, foundations were wrecked, homes were
(15:21):
crumbled because of this. This was that much beer. Can
you believe it? It blows my mind that it would
have kept that momentum going long enough to actually damage
people's properties. I can't even picture the sheer volume of stinking,
brown hot booze. And yeah, this does have a maybe
sobering it's not the right word for this episode, but
(15:42):
it's funny. There is a sobering aspect to this story,
which is that this community was largely composed of Irish
immigrants and newspapers in the establishment at the time very
much looked down on immigrants from Ireland, and the company
that own the brewery eventually did just fine. Because you
(16:03):
would think they would take an enormous financial hit right
from losing literally all of their inventory, killing eight people,
and destroying a neighborhood. But they initially thought they were
going to be in tough times because they had already
paid the excise taxes on the booze. But somehow they
got Parliament to give them a pass and they got
(16:25):
their money back. Yeah. Not only that they got um
Parliament or whatever governing body was overseeing this thing, UH
to rule the disaster. The collapse of this cask as
an act of God, an unavoidable act of God, meaning
no mortal entity could be held responsible, and meaning no
(16:47):
mortal UH got a dime. Right, And this was only
two days after the flood. Jury convened to investigate the accident.
They visited the side of the tragedy, They viewed the
corpses of the victims. They heard testimony from Crick we
mentioned earlier, and as you said, no, they said this
had been an act of God and that the victims
(17:10):
had met their death casually, accidentally, and by misfortune. I
would agree with the last part. I would. It was
definitely a serious case of misfortune. And there was a
lot of speculation about the court being corrupt or bribed,
but there was never an official statement made, and the
(17:32):
brewery soldiered on for a long time, for more than
a century. It wasn't until that it was demolished and
they built something called the Dominion Theater on part of
the site. In two thousand and twelve, there was a
pub in the area. The whole born whippet that's began
marking the Great Beer Flood of eighteen fourteen with a
(17:56):
vat of porter brewed especially for the day, which to
me feels like it's impoor taste. I'm just gonna go
on the record and say that I would agree with
you on the record. So another strange aspect of this
story is that this is not the only strange beverage flood.
(18:18):
I think do we ever mention the Great Molasses Flood.
I don't know if we've done a full episode on it,
but there's definitely a parallel. It's like the American equivalent, yeah,
of this, because I don't know there's ever been another
booze flood kind of like this because they switched after this,
This did bring about some change in the brewing process
where they changed it to concrete casks as opposed to
these shoddy, you know, rickety wooden cast But what's the
(18:40):
Great Molasses Flood? Because it's great as well. We were
talking off air about how it's funny when we have
a date and then the Great a thing, implying there
may have been lesser versions of that, the mediocre beer flood. Yeah,
so the Great Molasses Flood also known as the Boston
Molasses Disaster, occurred in January of nineteen nine teen, when
(19:00):
a huge storage tank of molasses burst, causing molasses to
rush through the streets at like thirty five miles an hour.
Fifty people were injured, twenty one people died. And then
there was the Honolulu Molasses spill, which happened in two
thousand thirteen. So this stuff isn't just ancient history. Luckily,
(19:20):
no humans as far as we know, passed away in
that molasses spill, but it did tremendous damage to the
maritime environment. And then there's one other one. I just
like the name. I don't know if you've heard this name.
No one want to see what you think about it.
The Pepsi fruit Juice Flood. That sounds like a drink,
that sounds like a really cool band. He he has
(19:41):
going to see the Pepsi fruit juice Flood. Red Rocks.
I caught him in Bonnaroo. You know, I just I
love their live work. They've taken a different direction on
the new album. Yeah, the Pepsi Fruit Juice Flood, which
I feel like they might put out his a beverage.
One day was a flood of twenty eight million liters
(20:03):
of fruit and vegetable juice into the streets of a
town in Russia called Lebedian, and it was caused by
the collapse of PepsiCo warehouse. UH No deaths resulted from
the spill, but there were two injuries and the streets
were awash with pineapple, apricot, tangerine, grape, mango, pomegranate, apple, cherry, orange, grapefruit,
(20:25):
and tomato juice. So if you're going to make a
commemorative drink for that, those would be the ingredients. And
I think that would taste pretty nasty, right, it does
seem so that doesn't seem like a very good combination
of flavors. It's like, I did you ever drink V eight?
I like the it splash, but no, not like tomato juice.
If that's what you're asking me, what I'm drink clamato next? Like,
what's the difference between V eight splash and V A.
(20:47):
V A splash has like fruit juices in it. It
has just a little bit. It hides the carrot juice
in the tomato juice. It's veiled. Kids like to drink it.
It's a tasty juice beverage well, you know what, maybe
I'll give it a shot. Well, I have never tried
V eight nor V eight splash have I experience in
all life unlived? No, but it takes. I mean, you
know you you're You've got your path, I got your story.
(21:11):
You know doesn't have to include V eight. Thanks man.
You drink other beverages that you know that I don't.
I don't drink like, uh, milk, I don't drink milk.
You don't drink milk, no nut milk. I feel like
milk is an ingredient. We actually we had this conversation
before with one of our coworkers, a great guy, Paul Deckant,
(21:32):
who also has the nickname Mission Control, and he is
definitely a fan of drinking milk. Wouldn't you say so? Caseys,
Have you guys had that conversation about milk as an
ingredient versus a beverage? I mean I consume it as
a beverage too, So I'm right there with him. I
like chocolate milk. Yeah, same same, I used to Did
you guys ever hear the story? This has nothing to
(21:54):
do with a great beer flood of eighteen fourteen, But
did you guys ever hear this story of I guess
the old urban legend that chocolate milk was originally created
to hide blood clots and impurities. Delicious way to hide it. Okay, well,
Casey on the case, and this ends our tail for today.
(22:15):
Thank you so much for tuning in ridiculous historians. Thank
you super producer, Casey pegram No my friend as always,
Thank you for exploring this strange, disturbing tale. Yeah, there's
a lot going on here. It's sort of a tale
of wealth and poverty and uh, you know, the rich
running rough shod over the poor. We sort of didn't
(22:36):
only see that aspect of it until the end, but um,
it's definitely there. And it's gross. It's gross u philosophically
and also physically gross because it's hot beer rushing through
the poop laden streets of London town right washing away
children having tea parties, I know. And no one got
in trouble. No one went to jail. It's a shame,
(22:58):
but at least it did lead to better or safety standards.
That's true. Speaking of things leading to things, this is
the part of the show where we lead to the
end of the show. Nice see my seg game is
on fire. It's I'm really working on I've been saving
that one. You've been putting in the work. You can
find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook,
you can find us on Twitter, but more importantly, you
can find us and your fellow Ridiculous Historians on our
(23:21):
Facebook community page, Ridiculous Historians. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
There's some good conversation there, some good memory, some good history, weirdness,
good conversation. Already said that all of those things. You
can find it right there, go to Ridiculous Historians. All
you have to do is like name one of our
names or something. And even if you just like make
up something clever, we'll we'll let you in. If it's funny,
we'll let you in totally. We'd like to thank our
(23:42):
research associate Gabe, who helped us out with this one. Um.
We'd also like to thank our buddy Alex Williams, who
composed this theme. Do you think he even knows that
we include a thank you to him in every episode?
Him to him? He had nodded. He's a very demure
kind of dude. Yeah, oh what our comic book recommendation.
Comic book recommendation for today, This one might be a
(24:04):
little on the nose. UM. But I had a friend
tell me how I got the movie version of Watchman
all wrong, how I need to go back and watch
it again. UM. I have not done that yet, but
I really felt like it kind of missed the mark
of what that comic was all about. UM, So I
really recommend going back and revisiting not the movie Watchman,
but the incredible seminal graphic novel Watchman by Alan Moore. UM. Watchman.
(24:28):
I also, oddly enough, have an Alan Moore recommendation that
I was thinking about Providence. Providence is the is this
story of a writer who explores the world of HP Lovecraft,
this guy who kind of who wants to mean HP Lovecraft.
It has all these weird experiences that if you like
(24:51):
HP Lovecraft, you like Alan Moore, you're gonna love this.
That's all I can say. See you next time, folks,
The Sexton Time
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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