June 10, 2025 • 32 mins
In January of 1919, a giant storage tank in Boston’s North End exploded—unleashing a tidal wave of molasses that tore through city streets at 35 miles per hour. Buildings crumbled. Horses drowned. Twenty-one people lost their lives in one of the strangest and deadliest industrial disasters in American history.
This week on Weirder After Dark, we’re diving into the sticky, surreal horror of the Great Molasses Flood. Was it really just a freak accident… or was someone to blame? From corporate cover-ups and immigrant scapegoating to the physics of syrup moving faster than you’d think, we’re breaking down the weirdest flood Boston ever saw.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, gang, we're headed to Boston, but not for the tea or
the accents. We're talking about the Great
Molasses Flood of 1919. Yes, you heard that right.
An actual wave of molasses swallowed a part of the city
whole, people, horses and all. So buckle up or stick around,
because things are about to get weird.
I'm Kathy. I'm Chris.
I'm Sean. And this is weirder after dark.
(00:37):
So Chris, Sean, have either of you been to the North End?
To Boston. What?
I've been to the North End, yes.I was just there actually a
couple weeks ago in a couple of Italian restaurants.
Fucking some amazing food. Chris, just because you're
Italian, I don't want you to getthis compliment.
But you fucking people, they make great carbs.
Great fucking carbs, man. So good.
So fucking good. I usually really go there for
(00:59):
the Irish food. Shut up.
Something boiled, you know. Listen, you know what?
I pick the Italians ass. He's like, I love potatoes.
Actually, I do love potatoes. Yeah, come on.
Come on. What's your favorite part about
a North End experience in Boston?
Not gonna lie, it's definitely like the pastries.
Oh. Yeah, so good, so good.
I went to pastry shop when I wasdown there and I can't eat
(01:21):
anything in there, but I get in there and I'm standing in line
to the pastry shop and, and the people I'm with, they order
their food and it's apparently like the best like cannoli place
in the North End. I can't remember the name of it,
but there's like an older woman who like must run the place and
she sits there and the other twoare ordering and she's like, go
get the silverware and the napkins.
It's on the other side like straight to me.
And I'm like, I'm not even eating this shit.
I ain't going to go get stuff like like whatever.
(01:43):
And then she looks at me and shegoes, Hun, are you married?
And I'm like, no. And she goes, I can tell you
don't listen. Well, it's just like, damn, it's
got burned by an Italian lady. Can I, can I just tell you, be
very careful around an Italian woman in her kitchen because she
will put you in your fucking place?
I got checked, I got checked. I was like, I'm on a work trip.
(02:04):
Show me some respect. None.
No, no, no, no, no it. Is a different culture.
Oh. Yeah, and it is so pretty too,
though the North End, like even though it's old and the some of
the streets are a little too narrow that you're like this is
kind of. Little too narrow, yeah.
Yeah, but the bricks everywhere.And like, I agree, something
about the North End is like meancoffee.
Like, Oh yeah, when it comes to like the espressos, I'm with the
(02:26):
last cappuccino. Yeah.
Last time I went in I got cannoli with like a double shot
of whatever it was so good like and it was at like this little
bakery down at the North End. I'm three months with a coffee
right now and I'm foaming from the mouth.
I think I'm very good talking about coffee.
You like coffee? You had what, a cannoli and what
cappuccino? Coffee.
(02:46):
Say coffee slower. You've gone three months
without. Coffee.
Three months without a coffee man Wow.
Yeah. Yeah, Why?
I hate myself. No, no.
I woke up one day and I was justlike, you can't control me,
coffee. And I'm losing.
I'm losing the battle. They can't control me.
I'm a snap any day. I don't really have a issue with
coffee. I drink like 1/2 a cup of coffee
(03:07):
a day. Yeah, when I was in the office,
I used to literally at one pointI counted it and I was having
like 6 or 7 cups of coffee a day.
Yeah. No, that's it.
That's it's dangerous. It's dangerous.
I was doing the same thing. I was having like, I have this
like really beautiful coffee maker and next thing I know I
was drinking like 3 cups of coffee a day and I was like,
this can't be OK. Like this can't be OK.
Like everything is good in moderation, even moderation, but
(03:27):
my coffee moderation became really unmoderated.
So yeah, I. Don't know, it's just all I
drink is coffee, yeah. Like showing water.
I'm just like, I don't know, didyou put fucking caffeine and
that where's the beans? I did the black gold and I was
like, I got a problem. I've kicked coffee, but I have
not kicked this molasses fuckinginsurer that you just did.
You say animals and humans died from molasses?
(03:48):
Animals and humans died from molasses.
Molasses, Chris. Yeah.
I I don't know this story, but Idon't know anything about it.
I just know that it happened in Boston and there was tragic.
Absolutely insane. I'm going to be so scared to
bake going forward from here. To understand just how strange
and surreal this disaster reallywas, we've got to rewind a
(04:09):
little bit and go back to Bostonin the early 1919, A city
standing right on the edge of chaos.
World War One had just ended a few months earlier.
Troops were coming home, but instead of peace and
tranquility, they end up findinga country in turmoil.
The Spanish Flu pandemic was still raging, claiming 10s of
1000 lives across the United States, and Boston had been one
of the hardest hit cities. People were sick, grieving and
(04:31):
exhausted. On top of that, the economy was
in upheaval. Jobs were scarce, wages were low
and inflation was climbing. Labor strikes were erupting
across the country. In fact, Boston's police force
would walk out on the job later that same year in one of the
most famous strikes in American history.
And politically, the country wasneck deep in what historians now
call the first Red Scare, a fullblown panic over anarchist,
(04:53):
socialist and foreign radicals. There were mail bombings, mass
arrests and surveillance. If you had an accent or the
wrong pamphlet in your pocket, you could end up in jail.
I don't know about you, Chris. Is this feeling a little a
little close to home right now? Yeah, this sounds familiar.
They do say when you forget about the past, you are doomed
to repeat it. Oh, OK, a little.
Bit of wisdom. Here.
(05:13):
Fucking deep. And just to add more fuel to the
fire, Prohibition was right around the corner.
People were stockpiling their booze, the black market was
brewing, and tensions were high in every direction.
Austin was like a pressure cooker ready to blow.
But nobody, and I mean nobody, expected what would happen next.
A massive 2.3 million gallon tank of molasses. 2.3 million
(05:35):
gallons. Yeah, I'm trying to picture
that. That's like an Olympic swimming
pool, right? It's going to be more than that.
It's a lot. I just keep thinking 2.3 million
gallons of milk. That's quite too much milk.
So, so much dairy. The tank.
It was a beast. It stood 50 feet tall, 90 feet
wide, casting a shadow over Commercial St.
It was owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol
(05:57):
Company, storing molasses to be turned into industrial alcohol
and more importantly, my favorite, rum.
Rum. With prohibition looming and the
company was racing the clock to cash in before the booze
business dried up, according to court records and research
detailed and Stephanie Poulos Dark Tide.
The tank was slapped together ina rush, built with steel that
(06:18):
was too thin and rivets that popped under pressure, and no
real safety testing had been done before it was filled to the
brim. From day one, it leaked.
Locals complained about the strange groaning sounds it made,
the syrup bleeding down the side.
But instead of addressing the problem, the company literally
painted it brown just to hide the dripping.
Yeah, they painted it brown so you couldn't see the fact that
(06:39):
it was leaking. They sure did this.
Is why we don't need regulationspeople right here.
This is a great example. Deregulate.
This reminded me when I was reading about this.
It reminded me of your episode where they like held the tanks
together with the rubber. Pants clearance, yes.
I love that though. They're like it's leaking.
No, it's not spray paint for. Months, people have been warning
(07:00):
the company that something wasn't right.
The Irish and Italian families living in the shadow of the tank
knew the sound by heart, the metallic groan of stressed
steel, the eerie clanking of thestructure flexing and settling.
Thick molasses seeped from its seams so often that neighborhood
kids turned it into a game. They would take sticks and go up
to the tank and scoop up the molasses as it dripped down the
(07:23):
sides. And then they would eat it like
it was a snack. OK, free snacks for everybody.
Hey, Frankie Molasses time did. The sticks?
Did they not have fences around this facility?
Was it just like open? Was there no safety precautions
at all? Well my question is how
desperate are these kids? They think molasses is a treat.
Like this is a bad time in life.It's 1919.
(07:45):
Have you ever tasted molasses? Like raw?
It doesn't taste good. Especially off of a spray
painted pan this is. Like the first version of an ice
cream truck coming in. Let's go down to the molasses
tank and have something to eat. On the afternoon of January
15th, 1919, the temperature in Boston rose unexpectedly to
about 40°. It was warm enough to accelerate
(08:08):
fermentation inside the tank as gas is built.
The pressure mounted inside the already fragile structure.
Then, without warning, the tank erupted with a roar.
Witnesses described it as sounding like a machine gun
firing rivets, snapping 1 by 1 in rapid fire succession.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Followed by a thunderous boom
that shook the ground. In an instant, 2.3 million
(08:30):
gallons of molasses burst free, unleashing the wave 25 feet high
and moving at 35 mph. That's faster than a human can
Sprint. The wall of molasses didn't
ooze. It charged twisted steel and
crushed anything that stood in its path.
The elevated train tracks along Commercial St. supported by
thick steel girders or snap liketwigs.
(08:52):
No way. This is giving a new meaning to
slow as molasses, right? Yeah.
This is as devastating and fast as molasses.
It's charging. It's charging.
It just exploded. Yeah, it just, it was like a
tidal wave coming in. It doesn't take much to be
faster than me, but the fact that molasses was impressive.
Just picturing like the tsunami that hit like.
(09:12):
Fukushima. Yeah.
Yeah, it. Was just washing everything away
my. God, but now it's sticky icky.
Well, Engine 31 Firehouse collapsed almost immediately.
Horses and wagons were flipped like toys.
People were lifted off of their feet, thrown into walls, pinned
beneath collapsing debris, and simply vanished into the flood.
(09:33):
Streams echoed through the streets, muffled by the syrup.
People trying to escape found themselves slowed to a crawl,
boots sucked off by the molasses, legs bound in the
sticky wave. Debris floated on top the brown
tide. Barrels splintered beams, carts
and bodies. They just floated by.
Well, I'm making fun of this, but this is fucking horrific,
Yeah. Like this really happened.
(09:54):
Like traumatic. Would you rather Titanic and go
down with it or die in the Boston molasses accident?
Like like what would you rather?Titanic, obviously.
Yeah. Yeah.
Why wait, wait, why? Obviously like no brainer
fucking going down to Titanic is.
Jack's gonna be there or he's gonna give me the door.
And yours, Jack did not get the door.
(10:15):
Yeah. I don't think I watched the
whole movie. You know.
There's not enough room, Chris. There's not enough room.
But she'll never forget you, Jack.
Kathy, what were you? What do?
You. I think both are terrifying, but
in all honesty I probably would rather go down with the Titanic.
Yeah, same. Yeah, I mean, you get
hypothermia, it kind of like slows you down.
You kind of go to like, sleep, Ithink, whereas the molasses, I
(10:36):
feel like was probably really quick.
Well, Marian Clarity, he was oneof those people who lived during
this incident and at just 38 years old, he lived in a three
story home near the molasses tank with his mother, brother
and sister. He went up late the night before
working in a local bar, and was finally catching up on a little
bit of sleep when he was awake by a low, unnatural rumble.
(10:57):
At first it didn't even seem to register danger, it was just an
odd vibration, like a train passing too close.
Then the house began to groan. The walls cracked, and within
seconds the structure was torn from its foundation.
Martin was thrown violently fromhis bed before he could even get
his bearing. He was underwater, if you could
call it that. The molasses was suffocating.
(11:17):
He described waking up submergedin the syrup, several feet deep,
unable to breathe, the weight pressing on his chest like a
vice. His arms flailed blindly in the
dark goo until miraculously, he grabbed hold of something solid,
the wooden frame of his own bed that had been drifting through
the wreckage. It's all terrifying though.
This is like horrified when you told me about a molasses
accident in the beginning, I'm like, you died by molasses and
(11:40):
it's like, no, no, this. Is fucked up.
It's super, it's super, super fucked up.
So basically when the molasses wave came, it took his house
down. Yeah.
And when he came to, he was likesubmerged in it.
So yeah. So it just it it wiped out
anything in its path. How do you even get out of it?
Like he was able to like get hisfloating bed, so the.
(12:01):
Molasses is at a warmer temperature at this point and
it's pushing. It's not caramel, it's sticky,
but it's not like that thick. There is a little bit of flow to
it. OK.
I'm thinking of like Maple syrupthat you put in the fridge
versus left out. Yeah.
Imagine when you like you open up the Maple syrup like fresh
off the shelf and then you open it, it like flows smoother,
(12:22):
right? Versus like you said, out of the
fridge. It kind of has that slower
movement to it at this point. It's like fresh off the shelf.
All right, well, Martin was grasping for air and somehow
spotted his sister Teresa trapped nearby and struggling to
stay above the surface. Using the floating bed frame, he
pulled her to safety and saved her life.
But unfortunately his relief wasshort lived and when the search
(12:45):
ended, they learned that their mother and younger brother had
both been killed, most likely crushed by the pressure of the.
House. Oh, so sad.
And then there was Anthony to Stereo, just eight years old
skinny little kid walking home from school for lunch with his
sisters. The North End.
It was his whole world, the narrow streets, the close knit
families, all the kids, his friends playing stickball
(13:06):
between the Stoops. For Anthony, January 15th, 1919
was supposed to be just another Wednesday.
Then came the sound. He said it was like Thunder, not
from the sky but somewhere deep beneath the earth.
A deep bone rattling rumble thatechoed off the brick buildings
and seemed to get louder with each step.
He turned around and he saw it. A wall of darkness barrelling
(13:29):
towards him. Not water, not smoke, but the
thick, fast moving molasses. It towered above him, taller
than a man, taller than a horse,and he didn't have time to
scream, he didn't have time to run.
In a blink, the wave swallowed him.
He was tossed through the air like a rag doll, slammed to the
ground and buried. The molasses wrapped around him
like cement, forcing itself intohis nose, his mouth, his ears.
(13:52):
He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe.
He said later that everything went black.
Not like black like when you go to sleep, but like a black
sinking feeling. When rescuers found him, they
didn't even know if he was alive.
His body was just a limp. It was just coated head to toe
in molasses. He was unconscious, grasping,
but he was alive. Anthony survived, but the trauma
(14:12):
at that moment of being swallowed by something so
surreal, it never really left him.
One minute he was just walking home for a sandwich, and then
next he was nearly entombed in sugar.
I can only fucking imagine what you're thinking.
If you like, you're like, hey, it's a great day.
And you turn around, there's a brown wave coming at you, and
you don't know it's molasses. You know you're captured in it.
8 years old. That's crazy.
(14:34):
Sane, but I also feel like what?What brown wave would it be
coming after you? You think it's like sewer shit
or something? Like like that's got to be your
first thought. I'm going to die in a fucking
wave of shits. Like I don't even know.
Like what would you think? Like I have no idea.
Like I don't even know if like does your brain even have like
the time to register like what it could be?
(14:54):
Obviously I've never had that experience.
Hopefully I never will, but I don't.
Know probably won't thanks the way.
I mean, yeah. I don't know.
She's not lucky. I'm lucky that I was not alive
in 1919. But you're unlucky enough to be
the only one who's died from molasses, since I could see it.
Spaghetti and the Maple syrup. Yeah, takes up like 2.3 million.
(15:15):
That's. A lot.
All right. Well, the destruction didn't end
when the wave hit. In fact, what happened next was
just as terrifying. And even more is deadly because
after the molasses surged forward, flattening everything
in its path, it didn't just settle, it pulled back.
Witnesses described the sickening, the kind you'd expect
(15:36):
from like an ocean riptide, not from something that belonged in
a candy factory. I mean, it's molasses.
The molasses, still moving with a force, reversed course as
gravity and pressure equalized. It dragged wreckage, animals,
and even people back to the point of origin.
One man compared it to being caught in a sticky undertow,
like the flood itself was tryingto reclaim what it had just
(15:58):
destroyed. Tsunami of molasses.
Yeah, so it's like the undertow at the ocean, right?
It's a big ass wave and it's going to pull back afterwards
under its own pressure and wait.Like, imagine just being like
fucking bashed around by molasses.
Your day's not bad enough and all of a sudden you're going to
get some fucking cement burn. I'm fucking the way back.
Like, Oh my God, no. It's so bad.
(16:19):
Well, survivors who had barely managed to stay above the
surface found themselves being pulled backwards into the chaos,
sucked under collapsed debris and dragged deeper into the
backed buildings. Rescuers had to fight not just
against the weight of the syrup,but the motion of it, shifting
currents of sugar, dragging bodies and beams alike.
It was a second assault, and onethat no one had seen coming.
(16:42):
The first responders were on thescene quickly, but they weren't
prepared for what they stepped into.
How could you? Literally Right.
Yeah. The moment on your molasses
drills this week, Come on. How do you fight molasses?
It's not water, I know that. I was going to say bread.
Kathy's just dipping bread in the molasses.
Yummy. I'm gonna eat my way out.
(17:04):
The moment boots hit the ground,they sank deep.
Horses panicked and thrashed, unable to gain footing.
Firemen and medics moved in slowmotion, each step like wading
through this thick mess. What made this disaster even
deadlier was the weather. As mentioned earlier, it started
off unusually warm for January in Boston.
By noon, the temperature had climbed to around 40°, which we
(17:26):
know is what caused the eruption.
But as the day wore on, as we know from being New Englanders,
what ended up happening? The temperatures dropped.
That thick wave of molasses, which had surged through the
streets like water, began to stiffen and cool.
What was already a nightmare to wade through turned into
something far worse. A congealed mess, cold and
dense, like glue, settling around everything and anyone
(17:48):
caught in it. It clung to clothes, to skin, to
every surface it touched. One newspaper described the
scene with a haunting image. They said people looked like
flies on flypaper. Oh.
That's not a nice image I don't like.
By the time the search ended, the toll was staggering. 21
people were dead, 150 injured. Some were crushed under debris,
(18:10):
others suffocated in the syrup. Entire buildings had collapsed
under the force of the wave, trapping people inside.
In the days that followed, the North End didn't look like a
neighborhood anymore. It looked more like a war zone.
Police officers, Red Cross nurses, even soldiers from Army
and Navy waded in to help. It was a full scale disaster
response, and the enemy was molasses.
Some nurses didn't just treat injured, they dove into the
(18:33):
molasses themselves to reach people buried beneath the muck.
Others worked tirelessly at the edge of the flood, wrapping
survivors in blankets, dressing wounds, and handing out hot food
to rescue workers. With so many injured, the city
had to turn a nearby building into an emergency hospital.
Surgeons operated by a Lantern light, their boots sticking to
the floor with every step. Even just moving through the
(18:54):
streets was a battle you couldn't run.
You couldn't even walk normally.Molasses pulled at you, slowed
your limbs and refused to let go.
Rescue workers didn't stop afterthe first wave hit.
They couldn't. For four grueling days, crews
clawed through wreckage and waved through waist deep
molasses and desperate search for survivors and then,
unfortunately for the dead. But what they found wasn't
(19:15):
always recognizable, and molasses had done more than
drown and crush. It preserved.
It formed a thick, sticky shell over the bodies, coating them
like a liqueur. Faces were glazed, closing fuse
to the skin. In many cases, family members
couldn't even tell who they were.
Looking at. Identification became a slow,
heartbreaking process. Even worse, some victims weren't
(19:36):
found at all, at least not rightaway.
Oh, that's so heartbreaking. Yeah, this one from silly to
sad, Yeah. I almost feel like they were
like amber like fossils. Kind of.
Yeah. Oh, exactly.
When it was finally over and thedead had been counted and the
injured treated, the cleanup began.
Which might have been the most difficult part of this because
molasses was everywhere. Covered the streets, the
(19:56):
sidewalks, the walls of the buildings.
Soaked into the floorboards, seeped into basements.
It crept under doors and filled alleyways.
Fire hoses couldn't blast away fast enough.
City crews tried sand for traction.
They tried. Salt water to thin it out.
But nothing really worked that easily.
For weeks. The North End remained sticky,
ruined and raw. And I don't want to make light
(20:16):
of this, I really don't. But as I was like, reading about
this story, I just kept thinkingof like, Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory and then like Final Destination, like this,
like weird, like March. Like a mash up movie.
Yeah, it's like like this candy factory like has all like this
yummy molasses. And then it's like all this is
death and gloom. Like it's kind of what it
reminded me of. Kathy's about to become a
(20:37):
director. Like if those two movies did a
crossover it would be the Molasses Flood of 1919.
Sure would make a good movie. Yeah, I'd watch.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie.
Halloween this year coming out. Well, once the syrup settled,
the last of the dead were counted.
The question on everybody's lipswas, of course, who's
responsible for this, right? Like who let the tank of 2.3
(20:59):
million gallons of molasses become a missile and destroy an
entire neighborhood? And why didn't anyone stop it?
Can I guess justice was swift and the company got fined and
people got put in jail right away.
Oh, that's so naive. Yeah, it was nice.
No, that's not what happened. Ah, shocker.
Well, the answer on paper was clear.
The tank had belonged to the United States Industrial Alcohol
(21:21):
Company, the same company that had rushed its construction,
ignored the leaks, and made no effort to ensure the structure
was sound. But instead of stepping in and
admitting fault, of course, as we suspected, they deflected.
The company didn't just deny blame, they launched a full
scale smear campaign. And in doing so, they leaned
into one of the darkest undercurrents of the time, fear
(21:42):
of immigrants. What?
They brought the molasses acrossthe border?
What are we talking about here? Not they blame the Italian.
Border They blame the Italians. Italians destroyed it to destroy
their own neighborhood I guess. Yes, their defense was that the
tank hadn't failed because it was poorly built.
But according to their lawyers, the tank had been bombed,
sabotaged, blown apart by foreign anarchists.
Specifically, they blamed the Italian immigrants in the North
(22:04):
End, the very same community that had been devastated by this
disaster. Typical.
It wasn't just tone deaf, it wascalculated.
This was 1990 seen. America was deep in the grip of
the first Red Scare. People were terrified of
communist anarchists, labor unions, anything that smelled of
revolution. Bombings had occurred in cities
across the country. So the idea of a radical plot,
(22:26):
it played well with the public'sparanoia.
And Italians, especially those who were poor, working class and
Catholic, were already seen by many as a dangerous outsider.
The company's legal team weaponized that bigotry with 0
evidence. They claimed foreign born
radicals had destroyed the tank to send a message, as if dozens
of their own neighbors hadn't been killed in the process.
(22:47):
There was number blueprints, 0 dynamite, no witnesses.
They used fear, racism and the desperate attempt to avoid
accountability. This is why you cannot trust
large corporations that are ultimately, at the end of the
day, just trying to do nothing other than making a bucks.
The second they fuck up because there are no regulations or
checks and balances to make surethat they're being held
accountable, they're going to point the finger to the fastest
(23:08):
motherfucking way to make sure that they don't have to pay a
fucking penny. And that is absolutely insane.
Preach. Damn.
Yeah, we just became a politicaltalk show.
So she, she wanted it. She wanted it.
I was trying to buy my talk. Yeah.
Damn. I didn't want it.
This is insane. This is absolutely.
This is literally the same thingthat happened down in fucking
Rhode Island with nuclear. Absolutely.
(23:29):
Yeah. They literally went ahead and
then blamed the guy as if he wassome fucking like tool just to
avoid having to pay a fucking fine.
It's just insane. It's insane.
Corporate America will do whatever they need to do to line
their pockets to avoid accountability.
As long as they are making out in the end, they don't care who
they step on. And of course, they blame the
Italians. Oh come on now, the Irish have
(23:50):
had a lot of their finger. Pointing not nearly as much as
the Italians. Every episode.
You make on the Irish, we've gone through so much more than
the Irish. OK.
It's a serious. You guys got the North End, OK,
what did we get? Southie.
Southie. Yeah, that's a win set up as AW.
We got some good fucking bars, we got some nice pubs.
(24:12):
That's just the Irish mentality.The Irish food sucks though.
Yeah, they got the North End in fucking bread, OK, Like they got
they got the wins. They really do.
They have bread all. The carbs, Pasta so good.
Pesto. Jesus Christ.
OK. Alfredo, my license.
But Boston didn't buy it. The public wasn't convinced by
corporate finger pointing or whispered rumors of immigrant
(24:34):
saboteurs. Not when entire families had
been buried in syrup. Not when buildings lay in ruin.
What followed was one of the most extensive civil
investigations in Massachusetts history.
The case dragged on for nearly five years.
Over 3000 witness testimonies were gathered.
Experts in engineering, chemistry, military and
construction all testified. A court appointed auditor,
(24:56):
Colonel Hugh Ogin, was brought in to examine the facts
independently, and when Odin released his final report in
1925, his conclusion was damning.
The disaster was entirely preventable, and the blame lay
squarely on the United States Industrial Alcohol Company.
He found the steel used to builda tank was too thin by nearly
50%. It didn't even meet the basic
(25:19):
standards for structural safety at the time.
Worse, it contained too little magnesium, a key element that
gives steel flexibility and strength.
In other words, the metal was brittle and weak.
Odin's report stated plainly thefailure of the molasses tank was
due to the inadequate construction in the lack of
safety testing. Fuck yeah, Get them, get them,
get them. Justice.
The company had rushed it into use, skipped pressure testing,
(25:41):
and ignored multiple complaints from local residents who heard
the groaning, seen the leaks, and even witnessed molasses
dripping from the seams. In one part of the testimony, an
engineer testified that had a simple hydrostatic test been
performed, the defect would havebeen obvious.
But none was ever done. And so in the end, Justice was
served, if you could say that, and the United States Industrial
(26:02):
Alcohol Company was ordered to pay $628,000 in damages to
victims and their families. How much is that today?
Roughly about $9 million. 21 deaths. 21 deaths, $9 million.
550 injured. Yeah, justice was not done.
Not served. Not served.
Tell me though, a bunch of regulations came into play and
it never happened again. Yeah.
(26:22):
So this this settlement was not like changing, you know, for a
corporation or these people, buta landmark ruling in terms of
corporate accountability becausethis case did something that
hadn't really been done before. It made a powerful company
legally responsible for ignoringpublic safety.
And that precedent helped shape building codes, inspection
standards and engineering oversight across the United
(26:43):
States. And we've been chipping away
with that ever since. Slowly, just saying.
No, none of that applies. More than a century later, the
great molasses blood hasn't completely left Boston.
Locals still whisper that in thehottest summer days, when the
summer sun bakes the bricks in the North End and the hair hangs
heavy, you can catch it. A faint, sweet scent.
(27:03):
The ghost of molasses sounds like folklore, but there is
supposedly science to back it up.
According to researchers from MIT and Boston University,
molasses seeped so deeply into the brickwork, wood and
cobblestone of the North End that for decades after, the
neighborhood did retain the smell every time the heat rose.
Cleanup crews in 1919 didn't have modern equipment or
chemical solvents. They used fire hoses, sand and
(27:26):
seawater, and none of it was enough to shrub the syrup from
the city pores. Some call it nonsense, others
swear by it, but either way, thelegacy of the flood is hard to
ignore. On Commercial Street, just steps
from where the tank once stood, there is a plaque that quietly
marks the site of the disaster. Most people pass it without even
noticing it. But Boston school kids today,
(27:46):
they still do projects on the flood.
Boston Public Library has a haunting black and white photo
of wreckage, crushed buildings and splintered beams and workers
knee deep. And Sarah.
One picture shows a man standingin the middle of the street,
surrounded by molasses and otherworkers in ruin, staring
straight at the camera like he still can't believe it happened.
That is absolutely insane. Yeah, I knew that there was a
(28:08):
molasses flood. I had no idea the details and
how bad it was. I didn't even know it was in
Boston. Like I, I knew.
It was in, yeah, I knew it was in the North End, but that was
the only details I had. 21 people died and 100 and 5000 is
insanity. Yeah, and just like an entire
neighborhood just completely wiped out.
And I looked at the pictures. It is insane.
This will be on Instagram. We're going to Boston's North
(28:31):
End tomorrow. Are you going to be smelling
buildings to see if you could smell molasses?
It's not going to be hot enough,but I may try to smell a
building. All right, I'm just checking.
Yeah, Chris is going to be like lick the ground.
Yeah. Was it just like?
I've I've. You fell for that before.
Yeah, I know I was going to. Say, and all the times I have
been like way too drunk in Boston, never have I been that
(28:51):
drunk. I don't know.
I've seen you drunk in Manchester.
You hugged a tree for a good 20 minutes.
I love that tree. That is an insane picture
though. That just like the chaos
clearly, like right there. Absolutely crazy.
I can't believe that there was so much it took down buildings.
I mean, that entire neighborhoodis devastated.
(29:12):
Yeah. And it had, you know, like when
you go through Boston and it hasthose elevated train railroad
tracks that are up on like the bridges.
It literally took one of those down.
The. Steel beams just completely
destroyed it. Absolutely not.
Whether you are left or you are right, we need corporate
regulation. People like you can't trust
nobody out there. God damn.
Fact. Fact.
(29:33):
Man. Well, Kathy, thank you.
Thank you for sharing that. That was absolutely devastating.
I really want to. Really sad, thanks.
I know I'm really sorry because I keep trying to start my
searches out being like I want to do a fun light hearted story
and then it. Started out fun and like oh.
Molasses I can. Totally see how you'd think
that. Yeah.
(29:53):
Like a molasses accident. And then 21 people die and
you're like, Oh my God, it's an accident.
Like, I can see it. People love your storytelling
because you bring some emotion into it.
You bring these stories to life.And as much as we could, we
appreciate it. I'm having fun.
And I, I thought this is a cool story.
Like, yeah. This story was not as slow as
molasses. Yeah, yeah, that's it.
(30:13):
You're a. Fucking honey, motherfucker.
Yeah, Kathy, thanks. I enjoyed it.
And gang, we hope you enjoyed it.
And if you did, make sure you goahead as Kathy said, and check
out our Instagram that is at Weirder After Dark.
Kathy will go ahead and post some absolutely devastating and
sticky photos so you can see a little bit more information
about what exactly happened on that day in 1919.
(30:33):
And don't just stop at Instagram.
Make sure you visit us over on Reddit and our Facebook where we
are growing some communities. And there you can talk to
individuals who are enjoying this podcast, like yourself, and
have a chance to interact with maybe one of the three of us.
You know us Bostonians over here, us cool cats. 1919 The
Boston Red Sox won the World Series, right?
I actually Googled that because I was going to make a joke and
it was the White Sox. I thought it was them too.
(30:56):
I did. I literally did.
But there were so many jokes. But they're all not going to
work. But just like that's not going
to work. You know what else is not going
to work? If you do not take a moment to
go ahead and send us your stories about weird shit
happening in New England. Because if you don't, guess what
we're going to to do? Unload 230 million gallons of
molasses on your ass. So send your weird stories to us
(31:19):
and you can send them to the gang at Weirder after dark.com.
I promise we won't kill 21 members of your family, will
kill 0, but it will be sticking and weird.
So send those stories, yeah. Only molasses stories going
forward. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Send those to Chris at weirder@thedark.com.
And don't forget, if you're enjoying this shit, and I mean
(31:39):
if you're absolutely fucking loving this shit, the best thing
you can do for us is wherever you're streaming this, whether
that is at Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever it is, drop
us a five star review and let usknow how we're doing.
It would absolutely mean the world to us.
And remember, it always gets a little weirder after dark.
Bye. Thank you guys.
Hey, gang, we're headed to Boston, but not for the tea or
the accents. We're talking about the Great
Molasses Flood of 1919. Yes, you heard that right.
An actual wave of molasses swallowed a part of the city
whole, people, horses and all. So buckle up or stick around,
because things are about to get weird.
I'm Kathy. I'm Chris.
I'm Sean. And this is weirder after dark.
(00:37):
So Chris, Sean, have either of you been to the North End?
To Boston. What?
I've been to the North End, yes.I was just there actually a
couple weeks ago in a couple of Italian restaurants.
Fucking some amazing food. Chris, just because you're
Italian, I don't want you to getthis compliment.
But you fucking people, they make great carbs.
Great fucking carbs, man. So good.
So fucking good. I usually really go there for
(00:59):
the Irish food. Shut up.
Something boiled, you know. Listen, you know what?
I pick the Italians ass. He's like, I love potatoes.
Actually, I do love potatoes. Yeah, come on.
Come on. What's your favorite part about
a North End experience in Boston?
Not gonna lie, it's definitely like the pastries.
Oh. Yeah, so good, so good.
I went to pastry shop when I wasdown there and I can't eat
(01:21):
anything in there, but I get in there and I'm standing in line
to the pastry shop and, and the people I'm with, they order
their food and it's apparently like the best like cannoli place
in the North End. I can't remember the name of it,
but there's like an older woman who like must run the place and
she sits there and the other twoare ordering and she's like, go
get the silverware and the napkins.
It's on the other side like straight to me.
And I'm like, I'm not even eating this shit.
I ain't going to go get stuff like like whatever.
(01:43):
And then she looks at me and shegoes, Hun, are you married?
And I'm like, no. And she goes, I can tell you
don't listen. Well, it's just like, damn, it's
got burned by an Italian lady. Can I, can I just tell you, be
very careful around an Italian woman in her kitchen because she
will put you in your fucking place?
I got checked, I got checked. I was like, I'm on a work trip.
(02:04):
Show me some respect. None.
No, no, no, no, no it. Is a different culture.
Oh. Yeah, and it is so pretty too,
though the North End, like even though it's old and the some of
the streets are a little too narrow that you're like this is
kind of. Little too narrow, yeah.
Yeah, but the bricks everywhere.And like, I agree, something
about the North End is like meancoffee.
Like, Oh yeah, when it comes to like the espressos, I'm with the
(02:26):
last cappuccino. Yeah.
Last time I went in I got cannoli with like a double shot
of whatever it was so good like and it was at like this little
bakery down at the North End. I'm three months with a coffee
right now and I'm foaming from the mouth.
I think I'm very good talking about coffee.
You like coffee? You had what, a cannoli and what
cappuccino? Coffee.
(02:46):
Say coffee slower. You've gone three months
without. Coffee.
Three months without a coffee man Wow.
Yeah. Yeah, Why?
I hate myself. No, no.
I woke up one day and I was justlike, you can't control me,
coffee. And I'm losing.
I'm losing the battle. They can't control me.
I'm a snap any day. I don't really have a issue with
coffee. I drink like 1/2 a cup of coffee
(03:07):
a day. Yeah, when I was in the office,
I used to literally at one pointI counted it and I was having
like 6 or 7 cups of coffee a day.
Yeah. No, that's it.
That's it's dangerous. It's dangerous.
I was doing the same thing. I was having like, I have this
like really beautiful coffee maker and next thing I know I
was drinking like 3 cups of coffee a day and I was like,
this can't be OK. Like this can't be OK.
Like everything is good in moderation, even moderation, but
(03:27):
my coffee moderation became really unmoderated.
So yeah, I. Don't know, it's just all I
drink is coffee, yeah. Like showing water.
I'm just like, I don't know, didyou put fucking caffeine and
that where's the beans? I did the black gold and I was
like, I got a problem. I've kicked coffee, but I have
not kicked this molasses fuckinginsurer that you just did.
You say animals and humans died from molasses?
(03:48):
Animals and humans died from molasses.
Molasses, Chris. Yeah.
I I don't know this story, but Idon't know anything about it.
I just know that it happened in Boston and there was tragic.
Absolutely insane. I'm going to be so scared to
bake going forward from here. To understand just how strange
and surreal this disaster reallywas, we've got to rewind a
(04:09):
little bit and go back to Bostonin the early 1919, A city
standing right on the edge of chaos.
World War One had just ended a few months earlier.
Troops were coming home, but instead of peace and
tranquility, they end up findinga country in turmoil.
The Spanish Flu pandemic was still raging, claiming 10s of
1000 lives across the United States, and Boston had been one
of the hardest hit cities. People were sick, grieving and
(04:31):
exhausted. On top of that, the economy was
in upheaval. Jobs were scarce, wages were low
and inflation was climbing. Labor strikes were erupting
across the country. In fact, Boston's police force
would walk out on the job later that same year in one of the
most famous strikes in American history.
And politically, the country wasneck deep in what historians now
call the first Red Scare, a fullblown panic over anarchist,
(04:53):
socialist and foreign radicals. There were mail bombings, mass
arrests and surveillance. If you had an accent or the
wrong pamphlet in your pocket, you could end up in jail.
I don't know about you, Chris. Is this feeling a little a
little close to home right now? Yeah, this sounds familiar.
They do say when you forget about the past, you are doomed
to repeat it. Oh, OK, a little.
Bit of wisdom. Here.
(05:13):
Fucking deep. And just to add more fuel to the
fire, Prohibition was right around the corner.
People were stockpiling their booze, the black market was
brewing, and tensions were high in every direction.
Austin was like a pressure cooker ready to blow.
But nobody, and I mean nobody, expected what would happen next.
A massive 2.3 million gallon tank of molasses. 2.3 million
(05:35):
gallons. Yeah, I'm trying to picture
that. That's like an Olympic swimming
pool, right? It's going to be more than that.
It's a lot. I just keep thinking 2.3 million
gallons of milk. That's quite too much milk.
So, so much dairy. The tank.
It was a beast. It stood 50 feet tall, 90 feet
wide, casting a shadow over Commercial St.
It was owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol
(05:57):
Company, storing molasses to be turned into industrial alcohol
and more importantly, my favorite, rum.
Rum. With prohibition looming and the
company was racing the clock to cash in before the booze
business dried up, according to court records and research
detailed and Stephanie Poulos Dark Tide.
The tank was slapped together ina rush, built with steel that
(06:18):
was too thin and rivets that popped under pressure, and no
real safety testing had been done before it was filled to the
brim. From day one, it leaked.
Locals complained about the strange groaning sounds it made,
the syrup bleeding down the side.
But instead of addressing the problem, the company literally
painted it brown just to hide the dripping.
Yeah, they painted it brown so you couldn't see the fact that
(06:39):
it was leaking. They sure did this.
Is why we don't need regulationspeople right here.
This is a great example. Deregulate.
This reminded me when I was reading about this.
It reminded me of your episode where they like held the tanks
together with the rubber. Pants clearance, yes.
I love that though. They're like it's leaking.
No, it's not spray paint for. Months, people have been warning
(07:00):
the company that something wasn't right.
The Irish and Italian families living in the shadow of the tank
knew the sound by heart, the metallic groan of stressed
steel, the eerie clanking of thestructure flexing and settling.
Thick molasses seeped from its seams so often that neighborhood
kids turned it into a game. They would take sticks and go up
to the tank and scoop up the molasses as it dripped down the
(07:23):
sides. And then they would eat it like
it was a snack. OK, free snacks for everybody.
Hey, Frankie Molasses time did. The sticks?
Did they not have fences around this facility?
Was it just like open? Was there no safety precautions
at all? Well my question is how
desperate are these kids? They think molasses is a treat.
Like this is a bad time in life.It's 1919.
(07:45):
Have you ever tasted molasses? Like raw?
It doesn't taste good. Especially off of a spray
painted pan this is. Like the first version of an ice
cream truck coming in. Let's go down to the molasses
tank and have something to eat. On the afternoon of January
15th, 1919, the temperature in Boston rose unexpectedly to
about 40°. It was warm enough to accelerate
(08:08):
fermentation inside the tank as gas is built.
The pressure mounted inside the already fragile structure.
Then, without warning, the tank erupted with a roar.
Witnesses described it as sounding like a machine gun
firing rivets, snapping 1 by 1 in rapid fire succession.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Followed by a thunderous boom
that shook the ground. In an instant, 2.3 million
(08:30):
gallons of molasses burst free, unleashing the wave 25 feet high
and moving at 35 mph. That's faster than a human can
Sprint. The wall of molasses didn't
ooze. It charged twisted steel and
crushed anything that stood in its path.
The elevated train tracks along Commercial St. supported by
thick steel girders or snap liketwigs.
(08:52):
No way. This is giving a new meaning to
slow as molasses, right? Yeah.
This is as devastating and fast as molasses.
It's charging. It's charging.
It just exploded. Yeah, it just, it was like a
tidal wave coming in. It doesn't take much to be
faster than me, but the fact that molasses was impressive.
Just picturing like the tsunami that hit like.
(09:12):
Fukushima. Yeah.
Yeah, it. Was just washing everything away
my. God, but now it's sticky icky.
Well, Engine 31 Firehouse collapsed almost immediately.
Horses and wagons were flipped like toys.
People were lifted off of their feet, thrown into walls, pinned
beneath collapsing debris, and simply vanished into the flood.
(09:33):
Streams echoed through the streets, muffled by the syrup.
People trying to escape found themselves slowed to a crawl,
boots sucked off by the molasses, legs bound in the
sticky wave. Debris floated on top the brown
tide. Barrels splintered beams, carts
and bodies. They just floated by.
Well, I'm making fun of this, but this is fucking horrific,
Yeah. Like this really happened.
(09:54):
Like traumatic. Would you rather Titanic and go
down with it or die in the Boston molasses accident?
Like like what would you rather?Titanic, obviously.
Yeah. Yeah.
Why wait, wait, why? Obviously like no brainer
fucking going down to Titanic is.
Jack's gonna be there or he's gonna give me the door.
And yours, Jack did not get the door.
(10:15):
Yeah. I don't think I watched the
whole movie. You know.
There's not enough room, Chris. There's not enough room.
But she'll never forget you, Jack.
Kathy, what were you? What do?
You. I think both are terrifying, but
in all honesty I probably would rather go down with the Titanic.
Yeah, same. Yeah, I mean, you get
hypothermia, it kind of like slows you down.
You kind of go to like, sleep, Ithink, whereas the molasses, I
(10:36):
feel like was probably really quick.
Well, Marian Clarity, he was oneof those people who lived during
this incident and at just 38 years old, he lived in a three
story home near the molasses tank with his mother, brother
and sister. He went up late the night before
working in a local bar, and was finally catching up on a little
bit of sleep when he was awake by a low, unnatural rumble.
(10:57):
At first it didn't even seem to register danger, it was just an
odd vibration, like a train passing too close.
Then the house began to groan. The walls cracked, and within
seconds the structure was torn from its foundation.
Martin was thrown violently fromhis bed before he could even get
his bearing. He was underwater, if you could
call it that. The molasses was suffocating.
(11:17):
He described waking up submergedin the syrup, several feet deep,
unable to breathe, the weight pressing on his chest like a
vice. His arms flailed blindly in the
dark goo until miraculously, he grabbed hold of something solid,
the wooden frame of his own bed that had been drifting through
the wreckage. It's all terrifying though.
This is like horrified when you told me about a molasses
accident in the beginning, I'm like, you died by molasses and
(11:40):
it's like, no, no, this. Is fucked up.
It's super, it's super, super fucked up.
So basically when the molasses wave came, it took his house
down. Yeah.
And when he came to, he was likesubmerged in it.
So yeah. So it just it it wiped out
anything in its path. How do you even get out of it?
Like he was able to like get hisfloating bed, so the.
(12:01):
Molasses is at a warmer temperature at this point and
it's pushing. It's not caramel, it's sticky,
but it's not like that thick. There is a little bit of flow to
it. OK.
I'm thinking of like Maple syrupthat you put in the fridge
versus left out. Yeah.
Imagine when you like you open up the Maple syrup like fresh
off the shelf and then you open it, it like flows smoother,
(12:22):
right? Versus like you said, out of the
fridge. It kind of has that slower
movement to it at this point. It's like fresh off the shelf.
All right, well, Martin was grasping for air and somehow
spotted his sister Teresa trapped nearby and struggling to
stay above the surface. Using the floating bed frame, he
pulled her to safety and saved her life.
But unfortunately his relief wasshort lived and when the search
(12:45):
ended, they learned that their mother and younger brother had
both been killed, most likely crushed by the pressure of the.
House. Oh, so sad.
And then there was Anthony to Stereo, just eight years old
skinny little kid walking home from school for lunch with his
sisters. The North End.
It was his whole world, the narrow streets, the close knit
families, all the kids, his friends playing stickball
(13:06):
between the Stoops. For Anthony, January 15th, 1919
was supposed to be just another Wednesday.
Then came the sound. He said it was like Thunder, not
from the sky but somewhere deep beneath the earth.
A deep bone rattling rumble thatechoed off the brick buildings
and seemed to get louder with each step.
He turned around and he saw it. A wall of darkness barrelling
(13:29):
towards him. Not water, not smoke, but the
thick, fast moving molasses. It towered above him, taller
than a man, taller than a horse,and he didn't have time to
scream, he didn't have time to run.
In a blink, the wave swallowed him.
He was tossed through the air like a rag doll, slammed to the
ground and buried. The molasses wrapped around him
like cement, forcing itself intohis nose, his mouth, his ears.
(13:52):
He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe.
He said later that everything went black.
Not like black like when you go to sleep, but like a black
sinking feeling. When rescuers found him, they
didn't even know if he was alive.
His body was just a limp. It was just coated head to toe
in molasses. He was unconscious, grasping,
but he was alive. Anthony survived, but the trauma
(14:12):
at that moment of being swallowed by something so
surreal, it never really left him.
One minute he was just walking home for a sandwich, and then
next he was nearly entombed in sugar.
I can only fucking imagine what you're thinking.
If you like, you're like, hey, it's a great day.
And you turn around, there's a brown wave coming at you, and
you don't know it's molasses. You know you're captured in it.
8 years old. That's crazy.
(14:34):
Sane, but I also feel like what?What brown wave would it be
coming after you? You think it's like sewer shit
or something? Like like that's got to be your
first thought. I'm going to die in a fucking
wave of shits. Like I don't even know.
Like what would you think? Like I have no idea.
Like I don't even know if like does your brain even have like
the time to register like what it could be?
(14:54):
Obviously I've never had that experience.
Hopefully I never will, but I don't.
Know probably won't thanks the way.
I mean, yeah. I don't know.
She's not lucky. I'm lucky that I was not alive
in 1919. But you're unlucky enough to be
the only one who's died from molasses, since I could see it.
Spaghetti and the Maple syrup. Yeah, takes up like 2.3 million.
(15:15):
That's. A lot.
All right. Well, the destruction didn't end
when the wave hit. In fact, what happened next was
just as terrifying. And even more is deadly because
after the molasses surged forward, flattening everything
in its path, it didn't just settle, it pulled back.
Witnesses described the sickening, the kind you'd expect
(15:36):
from like an ocean riptide, not from something that belonged in
a candy factory. I mean, it's molasses.
The molasses, still moving with a force, reversed course as
gravity and pressure equalized. It dragged wreckage, animals,
and even people back to the point of origin.
One man compared it to being caught in a sticky undertow,
like the flood itself was tryingto reclaim what it had just
(15:58):
destroyed. Tsunami of molasses.
Yeah, so it's like the undertow at the ocean, right?
It's a big ass wave and it's going to pull back afterwards
under its own pressure and wait.Like, imagine just being like
fucking bashed around by molasses.
Your day's not bad enough and all of a sudden you're going to
get some fucking cement burn. I'm fucking the way back.
Like, Oh my God, no. It's so bad.
(16:19):
Well, survivors who had barely managed to stay above the
surface found themselves being pulled backwards into the chaos,
sucked under collapsed debris and dragged deeper into the
backed buildings. Rescuers had to fight not just
against the weight of the syrup,but the motion of it, shifting
currents of sugar, dragging bodies and beams alike.
It was a second assault, and onethat no one had seen coming.
(16:42):
The first responders were on thescene quickly, but they weren't
prepared for what they stepped into.
How could you? Literally Right.
Yeah. The moment on your molasses
drills this week, Come on. How do you fight molasses?
It's not water, I know that. I was going to say bread.
Kathy's just dipping bread in the molasses.
Yummy. I'm gonna eat my way out.
(17:04):
The moment boots hit the ground,they sank deep.
Horses panicked and thrashed, unable to gain footing.
Firemen and medics moved in slowmotion, each step like wading
through this thick mess. What made this disaster even
deadlier was the weather. As mentioned earlier, it started
off unusually warm for January in Boston.
By noon, the temperature had climbed to around 40°, which we
(17:26):
know is what caused the eruption.
But as the day wore on, as we know from being New Englanders,
what ended up happening? The temperatures dropped.
That thick wave of molasses, which had surged through the
streets like water, began to stiffen and cool.
What was already a nightmare to wade through turned into
something far worse. A congealed mess, cold and
dense, like glue, settling around everything and anyone
(17:48):
caught in it. It clung to clothes, to skin, to
every surface it touched. One newspaper described the
scene with a haunting image. They said people looked like
flies on flypaper. Oh.
That's not a nice image I don't like.
By the time the search ended, the toll was staggering. 21
people were dead, 150 injured. Some were crushed under debris,
(18:10):
others suffocated in the syrup. Entire buildings had collapsed
under the force of the wave, trapping people inside.
In the days that followed, the North End didn't look like a
neighborhood anymore. It looked more like a war zone.
Police officers, Red Cross nurses, even soldiers from Army
and Navy waded in to help. It was a full scale disaster
response, and the enemy was molasses.
Some nurses didn't just treat injured, they dove into the
(18:33):
molasses themselves to reach people buried beneath the muck.
Others worked tirelessly at the edge of the flood, wrapping
survivors in blankets, dressing wounds, and handing out hot food
to rescue workers. With so many injured, the city
had to turn a nearby building into an emergency hospital.
Surgeons operated by a Lantern light, their boots sticking to
the floor with every step. Even just moving through the
(18:54):
streets was a battle you couldn't run.
You couldn't even walk normally.Molasses pulled at you, slowed
your limbs and refused to let go.
Rescue workers didn't stop afterthe first wave hit.
They couldn't. For four grueling days, crews
clawed through wreckage and waved through waist deep
molasses and desperate search for survivors and then,
unfortunately for the dead. But what they found wasn't
(19:15):
always recognizable, and molasses had done more than
drown and crush. It preserved.
It formed a thick, sticky shell over the bodies, coating them
like a liqueur. Faces were glazed, closing fuse
to the skin. In many cases, family members
couldn't even tell who they were.
Looking at. Identification became a slow,
heartbreaking process. Even worse, some victims weren't
(19:36):
found at all, at least not rightaway.
Oh, that's so heartbreaking. Yeah, this one from silly to
sad, Yeah. I almost feel like they were
like amber like fossils. Kind of.
Yeah. Oh, exactly.
When it was finally over and thedead had been counted and the
injured treated, the cleanup began.
Which might have been the most difficult part of this because
molasses was everywhere. Covered the streets, the
(19:56):
sidewalks, the walls of the buildings.
Soaked into the floorboards, seeped into basements.
It crept under doors and filled alleyways.
Fire hoses couldn't blast away fast enough.
City crews tried sand for traction.
They tried. Salt water to thin it out.
But nothing really worked that easily.
For weeks. The North End remained sticky,
ruined and raw. And I don't want to make light
(20:16):
of this, I really don't. But as I was like, reading about
this story, I just kept thinkingof like, Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory and then like Final Destination, like this,
like weird, like March. Like a mash up movie.
Yeah, it's like like this candy factory like has all like this
yummy molasses. And then it's like all this is
death and gloom. Like it's kind of what it
reminded me of. Kathy's about to become a
(20:37):
director. Like if those two movies did a
crossover it would be the Molasses Flood of 1919.
Sure would make a good movie. Yeah, I'd watch.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie.
Halloween this year coming out. Well, once the syrup settled,
the last of the dead were counted.
The question on everybody's lipswas, of course, who's
responsible for this, right? Like who let the tank of 2.3
(20:59):
million gallons of molasses become a missile and destroy an
entire neighborhood? And why didn't anyone stop it?
Can I guess justice was swift and the company got fined and
people got put in jail right away.
Oh, that's so naive. Yeah, it was nice.
No, that's not what happened. Ah, shocker.
Well, the answer on paper was clear.
The tank had belonged to the United States Industrial Alcohol
(21:21):
Company, the same company that had rushed its construction,
ignored the leaks, and made no effort to ensure the structure
was sound. But instead of stepping in and
admitting fault, of course, as we suspected, they deflected.
The company didn't just deny blame, they launched a full
scale smear campaign. And in doing so, they leaned
into one of the darkest undercurrents of the time, fear
(21:42):
of immigrants. What?
They brought the molasses acrossthe border?
What are we talking about here? Not they blame the Italian.
Border They blame the Italians. Italians destroyed it to destroy
their own neighborhood I guess. Yes, their defense was that the
tank hadn't failed because it was poorly built.
But according to their lawyers, the tank had been bombed,
sabotaged, blown apart by foreign anarchists.
Specifically, they blamed the Italian immigrants in the North
(22:04):
End, the very same community that had been devastated by this
disaster. Typical.
It wasn't just tone deaf, it wascalculated.
This was 1990 seen. America was deep in the grip of
the first Red Scare. People were terrified of
communist anarchists, labor unions, anything that smelled of
revolution. Bombings had occurred in cities
across the country. So the idea of a radical plot,
(22:26):
it played well with the public'sparanoia.
And Italians, especially those who were poor, working class and
Catholic, were already seen by many as a dangerous outsider.
The company's legal team weaponized that bigotry with 0
evidence. They claimed foreign born
radicals had destroyed the tank to send a message, as if dozens
of their own neighbors hadn't been killed in the process.
(22:47):
There was number blueprints, 0 dynamite, no witnesses.
They used fear, racism and the desperate attempt to avoid
accountability. This is why you cannot trust
large corporations that are ultimately, at the end of the
day, just trying to do nothing other than making a bucks.
The second they fuck up because there are no regulations or
checks and balances to make surethat they're being held
accountable, they're going to point the finger to the fastest
(23:08):
motherfucking way to make sure that they don't have to pay a
fucking penny. And that is absolutely insane.
Preach. Damn.
Yeah, we just became a politicaltalk show.
So she, she wanted it. She wanted it.
I was trying to buy my talk. Yeah.
Damn. I didn't want it.
This is insane. This is absolutely.
This is literally the same thingthat happened down in fucking
Rhode Island with nuclear. Absolutely.
(23:29):
Yeah. They literally went ahead and
then blamed the guy as if he wassome fucking like tool just to
avoid having to pay a fucking fine.
It's just insane. It's insane.
Corporate America will do whatever they need to do to line
their pockets to avoid accountability.
As long as they are making out in the end, they don't care who
they step on. And of course, they blame the
Italians. Oh come on now, the Irish have
(23:50):
had a lot of their finger. Pointing not nearly as much as
the Italians. Every episode.
You make on the Irish, we've gone through so much more than
the Irish. OK.
It's a serious. You guys got the North End, OK,
what did we get? Southie.
Southie. Yeah, that's a win set up as AW.
We got some good fucking bars, we got some nice pubs.
(24:12):
That's just the Irish mentality.The Irish food sucks though.
Yeah, they got the North End in fucking bread, OK, Like they got
they got the wins. They really do.
They have bread all. The carbs, Pasta so good.
Pesto. Jesus Christ.
OK. Alfredo, my license.
But Boston didn't buy it. The public wasn't convinced by
corporate finger pointing or whispered rumors of immigrant
(24:34):
saboteurs. Not when entire families had
been buried in syrup. Not when buildings lay in ruin.
What followed was one of the most extensive civil
investigations in Massachusetts history.
The case dragged on for nearly five years.
Over 3000 witness testimonies were gathered.
Experts in engineering, chemistry, military and
construction all testified. A court appointed auditor,
(24:56):
Colonel Hugh Ogin, was brought in to examine the facts
independently, and when Odin released his final report in
1925, his conclusion was damning.
The disaster was entirely preventable, and the blame lay
squarely on the United States Industrial Alcohol Company.
He found the steel used to builda tank was too thin by nearly
50%. It didn't even meet the basic
(25:19):
standards for structural safety at the time.
Worse, it contained too little magnesium, a key element that
gives steel flexibility and strength.
In other words, the metal was brittle and weak.
Odin's report stated plainly thefailure of the molasses tank was
due to the inadequate construction in the lack of
safety testing. Fuck yeah, Get them, get them,
get them. Justice.
The company had rushed it into use, skipped pressure testing,
(25:41):
and ignored multiple complaints from local residents who heard
the groaning, seen the leaks, and even witnessed molasses
dripping from the seams. In one part of the testimony, an
engineer testified that had a simple hydrostatic test been
performed, the defect would havebeen obvious.
But none was ever done. And so in the end, Justice was
served, if you could say that, and the United States Industrial
(26:02):
Alcohol Company was ordered to pay $628,000 in damages to
victims and their families. How much is that today?
Roughly about $9 million. 21 deaths. 21 deaths, $9 million.
550 injured. Yeah, justice was not done.
Not served. Not served.
Tell me though, a bunch of regulations came into play and
it never happened again. Yeah.
(26:22):
So this this settlement was not like changing, you know, for a
corporation or these people, buta landmark ruling in terms of
corporate accountability becausethis case did something that
hadn't really been done before. It made a powerful company
legally responsible for ignoringpublic safety.
And that precedent helped shape building codes, inspection
standards and engineering oversight across the United
(26:43):
States. And we've been chipping away
with that ever since. Slowly, just saying.
No, none of that applies. More than a century later, the
great molasses blood hasn't completely left Boston.
Locals still whisper that in thehottest summer days, when the
summer sun bakes the bricks in the North End and the hair hangs
heavy, you can catch it. A faint, sweet scent.
(27:03):
The ghost of molasses sounds like folklore, but there is
supposedly science to back it up.
According to researchers from MIT and Boston University,
molasses seeped so deeply into the brickwork, wood and
cobblestone of the North End that for decades after, the
neighborhood did retain the smell every time the heat rose.
Cleanup crews in 1919 didn't have modern equipment or
chemical solvents. They used fire hoses, sand and
(27:26):
seawater, and none of it was enough to shrub the syrup from
the city pores. Some call it nonsense, others
swear by it, but either way, thelegacy of the flood is hard to
ignore. On Commercial Street, just steps
from where the tank once stood, there is a plaque that quietly
marks the site of the disaster. Most people pass it without even
noticing it. But Boston school kids today,
(27:46):
they still do projects on the flood.
Boston Public Library has a haunting black and white photo
of wreckage, crushed buildings and splintered beams and workers
knee deep. And Sarah.
One picture shows a man standingin the middle of the street,
surrounded by molasses and otherworkers in ruin, staring
straight at the camera like he still can't believe it happened.
That is absolutely insane. Yeah, I knew that there was a
(28:08):
molasses flood. I had no idea the details and
how bad it was. I didn't even know it was in
Boston. Like I, I knew.
It was in, yeah, I knew it was in the North End, but that was
the only details I had. 21 people died and 100 and 5000 is
insanity. Yeah, and just like an entire
neighborhood just completely wiped out.
And I looked at the pictures. It is insane.
This will be on Instagram. We're going to Boston's North
(28:31):
End tomorrow. Are you going to be smelling
buildings to see if you could smell molasses?
It's not going to be hot enough,but I may try to smell a
building. All right, I'm just checking.
Yeah, Chris is going to be like lick the ground.
Yeah. Was it just like?
I've I've. You fell for that before.
Yeah, I know I was going to. Say, and all the times I have
been like way too drunk in Boston, never have I been that
(28:51):
drunk. I don't know.
I've seen you drunk in Manchester.
You hugged a tree for a good 20 minutes.
I love that tree. That is an insane picture
though. That just like the chaos
clearly, like right there. Absolutely crazy.
I can't believe that there was so much it took down buildings.
I mean, that entire neighborhoodis devastated.
(29:12):
Yeah. And it had, you know, like when
you go through Boston and it hasthose elevated train railroad
tracks that are up on like the bridges.
It literally took one of those down.
The. Steel beams just completely
destroyed it. Absolutely not.
Whether you are left or you are right, we need corporate
regulation. People like you can't trust
nobody out there. God damn.
Fact. Fact.
(29:33):
Man. Well, Kathy, thank you.
Thank you for sharing that. That was absolutely devastating.
I really want to. Really sad, thanks.
I know I'm really sorry because I keep trying to start my
searches out being like I want to do a fun light hearted story
and then it. Started out fun and like oh.
Molasses I can. Totally see how you'd think
that. Yeah.
(29:53):
Like a molasses accident. And then 21 people die and
you're like, Oh my God, it's an accident.
Like, I can see it. People love your storytelling
because you bring some emotion into it.
You bring these stories to life.And as much as we could, we
appreciate it. I'm having fun.
And I, I thought this is a cool story.
Like, yeah. This story was not as slow as
molasses. Yeah, yeah, that's it.
(30:13):
You're a. Fucking honey, motherfucker.
Yeah, Kathy, thanks. I enjoyed it.
And gang, we hope you enjoyed it.
And if you did, make sure you goahead as Kathy said, and check
out our Instagram that is at Weirder After Dark.
Kathy will go ahead and post some absolutely devastating and
sticky photos so you can see a little bit more information
about what exactly happened on that day in 1919.
(30:33):
And don't just stop at Instagram.
Make sure you visit us over on Reddit and our Facebook where we
are growing some communities. And there you can talk to
individuals who are enjoying this podcast, like yourself, and
have a chance to interact with maybe one of the three of us.
You know us Bostonians over here, us cool cats. 1919 The
Boston Red Sox won the World Series, right?
I actually Googled that because I was going to make a joke and
it was the White Sox. I thought it was them too.
(30:56):
I did. I literally did.
But there were so many jokes. But they're all not going to
work. But just like that's not going
to work. You know what else is not going
to work? If you do not take a moment to
go ahead and send us your stories about weird shit
happening in New England. Because if you don't, guess what
we're going to to do? Unload 230 million gallons of
molasses on your ass. So send your weird stories to us
(31:19):
and you can send them to the gang at Weirder after dark.com.
I promise we won't kill 21 members of your family, will
kill 0, but it will be sticking and weird.
So send those stories, yeah. Only molasses stories going
forward. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Send those to Chris at weirder@thedark.com.
And don't forget, if you're enjoying this shit, and I mean
(31:39):
if you're absolutely fucking loving this shit, the best thing
you can do for us is wherever you're streaming this, whether
that is at Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever it is, drop
us a five star review and let usknow how we're doing.
It would absolutely mean the world to us.
And remember, it always gets a little weirder after dark.
Bye. Thank you guys.
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