Palace of Westminster fire - October 16, 1834

On this day in 1834, the Palace of Westminster was destroyed in a fire. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi everyone, I'm Eve's Welcome to this Day
in History Class, a podcast for folks who can never
have enough history knowledge. Today is October nineteen. The day

(00:24):
was October thirty four. Much of the Palace of Westminster,
the home of the British Parliament, was destroyed in a fire.
In medieval times, the Palace of Westminster was the main
royal residence in London, and it housed the law courts
and government departments. By the eighteen hundreds, the complex have

(00:45):
been expanded and renovated so much that it had become
a winding mix of passages, walls, staircases and buildings. Members
of Parliament have been raising concerns about the state of
their accommodations for a while. So though a fire on
October eighteen thirty four was accidental, conditions in the complex

(01:05):
were ripe for disaster. Wooden tally sticks were used as
a form of tax receipt until eighteen six when an
act prohibiting the use of tallies for record went into force,
but it took years for the system to be overhauled.
By eighteen thirty four, there were still tallies that needed
to be thrown away. The Exchequer, a government department responsible

(01:29):
for collecting and managing taxes and revenues, was tasked with
getting rid of two carts full of tally sticks. The
Clerk of Works decided to have them burned unsupervised and
underfloor stoves in the basement of the House of Lords.
So workers followed his orders and did just that. People
who visited the House of Lords that day noticed how

(01:51):
hot the floor was and that smoke was rising from it,
but the housekeeper and the Clerk of Works ignored the warnings.
The misses were closed around five pm. Around an hour later,
a doorkeeper's wife announced that the House of Lords was
on fire. Not long after it was discovered, a fireball
exploded out of the building. The fire attracted a lot

(02:14):
of attention. Crowds of spectators gathered and many of them
painted and sketched the scene. Parish engines, insurance companies and
the private London Fire Engine Establishment worked to put out
the blaze. Volunteers including MPs and lords, also staffed water
pumps throughout the night. By the time the fire was

(02:36):
under control. Westminster Hall, the Undercroft Chapel of St Mary,
the Jewel Tower, the Chapter House of St. Stephen's and
part of the Cloisters were saved, but the House of
Commons in the House of Lords were destroyed, along with
most other buildings in the complex. After the fire, people
capitalized on the bus surrounding the event by selling cheap

(02:58):
prints and creating souvenirs from stone, lead and wood taken
from the site. The damage to the palace was estimated
at two million pounds. Nobody was prosecuted for causing the
fire and destruction of the buildings, but a public inquiry
did suggest the fire was a result of negligence. A
commission was formed to look into the loss of parliamentary records.

(03:21):
It made recommendations that led to the creation of the
Public Record Office, which later became the National Archives. Architect
Charles Berry won a government competition to design a new palace.
He and Augustus Pugin developed a new complex that included
the surviving structures. I'm Eve Steffcote and hopefully you know

(03:42):
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
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