April 15, 2024 • 13 mins
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 7, 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 100 years before that.
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.
-------------------
Please support me on Patreon for just $2 a month: patreon.com/foodhistorypod
-------------------
Sources for this episode's research:
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-fantastic-history-of-food--3591729/support.
In episode 7, 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 100 years before that.
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.
-------------------
Please support me on Patreon for just $2 a month: patreon.com/foodhistorypod
-------------------
Sources for this episode's research:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Beer_Flood
- https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-London-Beer-Flood-of-1814/
- https://www.historyextra.com/period/georgian/great-beer-flood-1814-what-happened/
- https://thehistorypress.co.uk/article/the-london-beer-flood/
- https://www.history.com/news/london-beer-flood
- https://explorethearchive.com/london-beer-flood
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1814-beer-flood-killed-eight-people-180964256/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-fantastic-history-of-food--3591729/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
In our modern age, we havelived through natural disasters and floods in various
parts of the world, and nomatter what, they are always tragic.
But tragic floods are not always acause of nature. In episode seven,
we discussed the Great Molasses flood thatoccurred in Boston and the ensuing devastation of
that event. Well, today we'llbe taking a look at a similar,
(00:22):
albeit less gloopy, tidal wave ofdestruction that occurred one hundred years before that
one. And as much as anyof us may love a beer every now
and then and dream of swimming ina pool of the bubbly liquid, this
tragic event was unfortunately no laughing matter. These are the bizarre but true stories
(00:44):
from history and in some way involvedfood. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and
this is the fantastic history of food. It's late afternoon on the seventeenth of
(01:11):
October eighteen fourteen. Men and womenare rushing about the streets of London,
just like they would any other dayof their lives. To them and the
general population as a whole, nothingseemed particularly remarkable about this day. Ducking
down one of the alleys, asmall boy on an errand from his mother
passes an enormous twenty five foot highwall that to him seems like it stretches
(01:33):
all the way to the sky.He marvels at it for a moment and
then continues on his way. Thismammoth facade just happened to be one of
the boundary walls of the vast BainbridgeStreet 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,
(01:55):
of which it produced more than onehundred thousand barrels each year. It was
by this time one of the twolargest breweries in London, having been purchased
in eighteen o nine by Sir HenryMeu, 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'sfootsteps. His father, Sir Richard MW,
(02:19):
had previously owned a brewery of hisown called the Griffin Brewery, in
which he had constructed the largest beervat 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 decidedto build one of his own that stood
almost over twenty feet tall and wascapable of holding around eighteen thousand barrels of
(02:43):
the bubbling porter. Now to builda that of this size was no mean
feat, and besides the sheer amountof reinforced woodertook to create the barrel sides,
they would also need a significant reinforcementaround 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, theyneeded eighty one metric tons of metal.
(03:07):
The porter inside the vats was leftto 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 insideof them. George Creek had been an
employee of the brewery for the pastseventeen years, and during that time had
(03:27):
watched in amazement as the brewery hadgrown larger and larger, until it was
now the second biggest producer of porterin the city. He was a diligent
man for the most part, andin his role as storehouse clerk, it
was his job to inspect the barrelsand the vats of beer on a daily
basis, making sure that all wasin order and that there were no leaks
or cracks that could drain away thebeer inside. On this particular day,
(03:52):
the sun was already on its descenttowards the horizon. At around four thirty
p m. In the afternoon,George Creek, as was his routine,
unlocked the heavy iron lock on thedoors to the storehouse and began meandering through
the vessels inside, inspecting each oneas he went. He climbed up onto
a walkway above the vats and inspectedthe triple story high wooden containers to see
(04:14):
that all was well. Approaching oneof the last ones in the line,
he noticed that one of the metalhoops 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 happenedto be storing a ten month old batch
of Porter. Now, this vathad been filled right up to the very
brim of the enormous container, leavingjust four inches spare at the top.
(04:39):
With twenty two feet of beer belowit. 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 sortof thing happened a few times each year
without consequence, But being the diligentsort of man that he was, he
still made a point of reporting itto his superiors, who, like him,
weren't overly concerned by the news.His boss told him not to worry
(05:02):
and that quote no harm whatsoever wouldensue, before instructing him to write a
letter to another employee of the breweryrequesting that the hoop be repaired and replaced
at a later date. Little didany of them know that inside that very
cask of ten month old porter,the pressure from the fermentation process was growing
(05:24):
at an alarming rate. A littleover an hour after George Creek had first
noticed the missing hoop, he foundhimself inside his office in the middle of
writing out the note that would requestthe repair for the giant mental hoop.
In what was an otherwise fairly silentwarehouse that stored the vast quantities of beer,
(05:44):
any sound echoed throughout the cavernous chamber, and so it was when George
first heard a loud pop from somewherein the depths of the storehouse before he
had time to react. Another soundfollowed quickly after, but this time it
was a roaring noise, explosive inboth sound and force, and George,
knowing what was happening, threw himselfto the floor beneath his desk, just
(06:08):
moments earlier, on the vat thatwas missing one of its immense hoops.
The pressure had continued building and buildingto a point where the enormous container could
no longer remain structurally intact. Withinseconds, the three story high cask exploded
outwards, shattering the wooden supports intomere splinters. From this vat alone burst
(06:29):
forth the equivalent of one million pintsof beer. The force of the blast
blew off the valve of a nearbycask, which spewed out its own contents
towards its neighboring cask, setting offa deadly chain reaction as vat after vat
was crushed under the hundreds of tonsof liquid, smashing everything within its path.
The storehouse itself could not contain theviolent tsunami of liquid and crumbled in
(06:54):
its wake. In fact, theforce of The explosion had been so immense
that bricks from the st Storehouse buildinghad been sent flying hundreds of meters into
the air and came subsequently raining downon to the rooftops of the houses on
the nearby Great Russell Street. Theliquid, having burst through the storehouse walls,
didn't even stop to slow down asit toppled the twenty five foot high
(07:15):
perimeter wall and crashed into the TavistockArms Pub. Inside was a young teenage
bar maid named Eleanor Cooper, whowas unluckily caught beneath the rubble as the
building collapsed around her like something outof a fever dream. An enormous fifteen
foot high wave of porter swept throughthe streets and alleyways of the surrounding neighborhood,
(07:38):
taking with it anything that wasn't naileddown. 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 exceptaround or through local homes. Residents who
for the most part had never learnedto swim, clambered onto dining room tables
or any other furniture that would savethem from drowning. In the swirling black
(08:01):
mass that threatened to engulf them.Basements and makeshift housings surrounding the brewery were
either washed away or crushed under thedeluge, 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 mosthorrific twist of fate. Inside of a
(08:26):
cellar nearby, five mourners had gatheredto 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 spaceand took their lives in a matter of
seconds. Between them Elinor Cooper andthe Banfields, eight people had already lost
their lives to this tragedy. Withinjust a few minutes, however, the
(08:50):
deafening roar of the flooding beer becameeerily silent once again. The surrounding neighborhoods,
already soaked in poverty, were nowsaturated in hot malt liquor. The
silence was soon shattered by screams andcries for help from those trapped inside the
nearby buildings. Rescuers wasted no timein getting to the source of the cries,
wading through still waist deep beer insome sections and picking through the tangled
(09:15):
debris that had been left behind.Soon onlookers and gawkhas from surrounding neighborhoods came
flooding into the area to see whatthe noise had been. Rescuers shouted at
them to keep quiet so they couldbetter hear the cries for help that floated
out of the ruined buildings. London'sMorning Post put it this way, the
surrounding scene of desolation presents a mostawful and terrific appearance, equal to that
(09:39):
which fire or earthquake may be supposedto occasion. In the days following the
event, rumors began circulating throughout Londonand beyond of people rushing to the area
to fill up tubs and buckets ofbeer, taking it home for later enjoyment,
and even stories of men drinking itstraight from the streets in an uncontrolled
mass drunken revelry. The stories evenwent so far as to claim that another
(10:03):
death had occurred from the beer flood, but this time due to alcohol.
Poisoning from the man's over indulgence onthe streets, and while it is possible
that this happened, and most certainlyis a likely event, knowing human's propensity
to grab at anything free, thereare no reliable sources to confirm whether or
not this truly occurred. Perhaps surprisingly, all of the brewery employees who had
(10:24):
been closest to the incidents had survivedrelatively unharmed, with the superintendent and three
workers needing to be rescued from therubble. The brewery itself, however,
was not quite so lucky. Theincident not only severely tarnished its reputation but
structurally put it on the point ofbankruptcy. In what was seen as a
contentious verdict, the coroner's inquest ruledthe tragedy an act of God rather than
(10:48):
negligence on the part of the brewery, and in so doing meant that they
would not have to pay any compensationfor 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 totheir own buildings, and the replacement cost
of the vats, they were indebt of around twenty three thousand pounds,
which in today's money would be almosttwo point three million pounds. Utilizing connections
(11:13):
they had in Parliament, they successfullypetitioned 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 chaoshad died down, the Horseshoe Brewery went
back into business before moving to theNine Elms Brewery in Wandsworth. On the
(11:33):
old brewery site now stands the famousDominion Theatre in what is today London's West
End. As a lingering legacy ofthis tragedy, enormous wooden vats were soon
phased out, to be replaced bylined concrete vessels with a significantly higher capacity
to withstand pressure build up. Thetragedy left an indelible mark on the community
(11:54):
and especially on the families of thosewho lost their lives. For months,
the sickly sweet smell of the maltliquor hung in the air as an inescapable
and constant reminder to all of whathad happened on that faithful day in eighteen
fourteen. This show is made entirelyby me Nick Charlie key, with our
(12:30):
theme music having been made by theEnigma that is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
If you'd like to support the show, the simplest way to do that is
over on our Patreon account. There'sjust one option, so for just two
bucks a month, you'll help mekeep producing this show, and in return,
you'll get your name forever etched ontoour supporter's Wall of Fame over on
(12:54):
our website and then maybe listen outfor your name in an upcoming episode.
So until next time, bonte apetite
In our modern age, we havelived through natural disasters and floods in various
parts of the world, and nomatter what, they are always tragic.
But tragic floods are not always acause of nature. In episode seven,
we discussed the Great Molasses flood thatoccurred in Boston and the ensuing devastation of
that event. Well, today we'llbe taking a look at a similar,
(00:22):
albeit less gloopy, tidal wave ofdestruction that occurred one hundred years before that
one. And as much as anyof us may love a beer every now
and then and dream of swimming ina pool of the bubbly liquid, this
tragic event was unfortunately no laughing matter. These are the bizarre but true stories
(00:44):
from history and in some way involvedfood. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and
this is the fantastic history of food. It's late afternoon on the seventeenth of
(01:11):
October eighteen fourteen. Men and womenare rushing about the streets of London,
just like they would any other dayof their lives. To them and the
general population as a whole, nothingseemed particularly remarkable about this day. Ducking
down one of the alleys, asmall boy on an errand from his mother
passes an enormous twenty five foot highwall that to him seems like it stretches
(01:33):
all the way to the sky.He marvels at it for a moment and
then continues on his way. Thismammoth facade just happened to be one of
the boundary walls of the vast BainbridgeStreet 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,
(01:55):
of which it produced more than onehundred thousand barrels each year. It was
by this time one of the twolargest breweries in London, having been purchased
in eighteen o nine by Sir HenryMeu, 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'sfootsteps. His father, Sir Richard MW,
(02:19):
had previously owned a brewery of hisown called the Griffin Brewery, in
which he had constructed the largest beervat 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 decidedto build one of his own that stood
almost over twenty feet tall and wascapable of holding around eighteen thousand barrels of
(02:43):
the bubbling porter. Now to builda that of this size was no mean
feat, and besides the sheer amountof reinforced woodertook to create the barrel sides,
they would also need a significant reinforcementaround 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, theyneeded eighty one metric tons of metal.
(03:07):
The porter inside the vats was leftto 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 insideof them. George Creek had been an
employee of the brewery for the pastseventeen years, and during that time had
(03:27):
watched in amazement as the brewery hadgrown larger and larger, until it was
now the second biggest producer of porterin the city. He was a diligent
man for the most part, andin his role as storehouse clerk, it
was his job to inspect the barrelsand the vats of beer on a daily
basis, making sure that all wasin order and that there were no leaks
or cracks that could drain away thebeer inside. On this particular day,
(03:52):
the sun was already on its descenttowards the horizon. At around four thirty
p m. In the afternoon,George Creek, as was his routine,
unlocked the heavy iron lock on thedoors to the storehouse and began meandering through
the vessels inside, inspecting each oneas he went. He climbed up onto
a walkway above the vats and inspectedthe triple story high wooden containers to see
(04:14):
that all was well. Approaching oneof the last ones in the line,
he noticed that one of the metalhoops 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 happenedto be storing a ten month old batch
of Porter. Now, this vathad been filled right up to the very
brim of the enormous container, leavingjust four inches spare at the top.
(04:39):
With twenty two feet of beer belowit. 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 sortof thing happened a few times each year
without consequence, But being the diligentsort of man that he was, he
still made a point of reporting itto his superiors, who, like him,
weren't overly concerned by the news.His boss told him not to worry
(05:02):
and that quote no harm whatsoever wouldensue, before instructing him to write a
letter to another employee of the breweryrequesting that the hoop be repaired and replaced
at a later date. Little didany of them know that inside that very
cask of ten month old porter,the pressure from the fermentation process was growing
(05:24):
at an alarming rate. A littleover an hour after George Creek had first
noticed the missing hoop, he foundhimself inside his office in the middle of
writing out the note that would requestthe repair for the giant mental hoop.
In what was an otherwise fairly silentwarehouse that stored the vast quantities of beer,
(05:44):
any sound echoed throughout the cavernous chamber, and so it was when George
first heard a loud pop from somewherein the depths of the storehouse before he
had time to react. Another soundfollowed quickly after, but this time it
was a roaring noise, explosive inboth sound and force, and George,
knowing what was happening, threw himselfto the floor beneath his desk, just
(06:08):
moments earlier, on the vat thatwas missing one of its immense hoops.
The pressure had continued building and buildingto a point where the enormous container could
no longer remain structurally intact. Withinseconds, the three story high cask exploded
outwards, shattering the wooden supports intomere splinters. From this vat alone burst
(06:29):
forth the equivalent of one million pintsof beer. The force of the blast
blew off the valve of a nearbycask, which spewed out its own contents
towards its neighboring cask, setting offa deadly chain reaction as vat after vat
was crushed under the hundreds of tonsof liquid, smashing everything within its path.
The storehouse itself could not contain theviolent tsunami of liquid and crumbled in
(06:54):
its wake. In fact, theforce of The explosion had been so immense
that bricks from the st Storehouse buildinghad been sent flying hundreds of meters into
the air and came subsequently raining downon to the rooftops of the houses on
the nearby Great Russell Street. Theliquid, having burst through the storehouse walls,
didn't even stop to slow down asit toppled the twenty five foot high
(07:15):
perimeter wall and crashed into the TavistockArms Pub. Inside was a young teenage
bar maid named Eleanor Cooper, whowas unluckily caught beneath the rubble as the
building collapsed around her like something outof a fever dream. An enormous fifteen
foot high wave of porter swept throughthe streets and alleyways of the surrounding neighborhood,
(07:38):
taking with it anything that wasn't naileddown. 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 exceptaround or through local homes. Residents who
for the most part had never learnedto swim, clambered onto dining room tables
or any other furniture that would savethem from drowning. In the swirling black
(08:01):
mass that threatened to engulf them.Basements and makeshift housings surrounding the brewery were
either washed away or crushed under thedeluge, 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 mosthorrific twist of fate. Inside of a
(08:26):
cellar nearby, five mourners had gatheredto 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 spaceand took their lives in a matter of
seconds. Between them Elinor Cooper andthe Banfields, eight people had already lost
their lives to this tragedy. Withinjust a few minutes, however, the
(08:50):
deafening roar of the flooding beer becameeerily silent once again. The surrounding neighborhoods,
already soaked in poverty, were nowsaturated in hot malt liquor. The
silence was soon shattered by screams andcries for help from those trapped inside the
nearby buildings. Rescuers wasted no timein getting to the source of the cries,
wading through still waist deep beer insome sections and picking through the tangled
(09:15):
debris that had been left behind.Soon onlookers and gawkhas from surrounding neighborhoods came
flooding into the area to see whatthe noise had been. Rescuers shouted at
them to keep quiet so they couldbetter hear the cries for help that floated
out of the ruined buildings. London'sMorning Post put it this way, the
surrounding scene of desolation presents a mostawful and terrific appearance, equal to that
(09:39):
which fire or earthquake may be supposedto occasion. In the days following the
event, rumors began circulating throughout Londonand beyond of people rushing to the area
to fill up tubs and buckets ofbeer, taking it home for later enjoyment,
and even stories of men drinking itstraight from the streets in an uncontrolled
mass drunken revelry. The stories evenwent so far as to claim that another
(10:03):
death had occurred from the beer flood, but this time due to alcohol.
Poisoning from the man's over indulgence onthe streets, and while it is possible
that this happened, and most certainlyis a likely event, knowing human's propensity
to grab at anything free, thereare no reliable sources to confirm whether or
not this truly occurred. Perhaps surprisingly, all of the brewery employees who had
(10:24):
been closest to the incidents had survivedrelatively unharmed, with the superintendent and three
workers needing to be rescued from therubble. The brewery itself, however,
was not quite so lucky. Theincident not only severely tarnished its reputation but
structurally put it on the point ofbankruptcy. In what was seen as a
contentious verdict, the coroner's inquest ruledthe tragedy an act of God rather than
(10:48):
negligence on the part of the brewery, and in so doing meant that they
would not have to pay any compensationfor 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 totheir own buildings, and the replacement cost
of the vats, they were indebt of around twenty three thousand pounds,
which in today's money would be almosttwo point three million pounds. Utilizing connections
(11:13):
they had in Parliament, they successfullypetitioned 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 chaoshad died down, the Horseshoe Brewery went
back into business before moving to theNine Elms Brewery in Wandsworth. On the
(11:33):
old brewery site now stands the famousDominion Theatre in what is today London's West
End. As a lingering legacy ofthis tragedy, enormous wooden vats were soon
phased out, to be replaced bylined concrete vessels with a significantly higher capacity
to withstand pressure build up. Thetragedy left an indelible mark on the community
(11:54):
and especially on the families of thosewho lost their lives. For months,
the sickly sweet smell of the maltliquor hung in the air as an inescapable
and constant reminder to all of whathad happened on that faithful day in eighteen
fourteen. This show is made entirelyby me Nick Charlie key, with our
(12:30):
theme music having been made by theEnigma that is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
If you'd like to support the show, the simplest way to do that is
over on our Patreon account. There'sjust one option, so for just two
bucks a month, you'll help mekeep producing this show, and in return,
you'll get your name forever etched ontoour supporter's Wall of Fame over on
(12:54):
our website and then maybe listen outfor your name in an upcoming episode.
So until next time, bonte apetite
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