London Beer Flood - October 17, 1814

On this day in 1814, a flood of beer burst out of a London brewery, killing eight people and injuring others. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey y'all, I'm Eves. Welcome to This Day
in History Class, a show where we one day ship
nuggets of history straight to your brain through your ear hole.
Today is October. The day was October eighteen fourteen. A

(00:27):
huge vat of porter at the Horseshoe Brewery in London burst,
sending a wave of beer into the surrounding streets. Eight
people died in the accident. The Horseshoe Brewery was in St.
Giles Rookery, a poor area that's that could hold thousands
of barrels of beer were a major attraction for London

(00:48):
breweries at the time. The Horseshoe was no exception. The
brewery had a massive twenty two ft wooden fermentation bat,
among other enormous bats. The vat was held together with
heavy iron rings. On the afternoon of October sevente clerk
George Crick noticed that a ring had come off a

(01:09):
cask that stored a batch of porter, But Krick and
his boss were not that concerned about the broken ring,
since that issue happened at least a couple of times
per year. Crick's boss told him to write a letter
to a brewery partner to have the problem fixed later.
But just a couple of hours after Crick discovered the
snapped ring, the vat burst. The explosion of the first

(01:33):
vat caused other vats in the brewery to burst as well.
The back wall of the brewery collapsed and at least
a hundred thousand gallons of beer blasted out of the building.
Everyone inside the brewery survived, though some had to be
rescued from the flood and rubble. But eight women and
children died in the London beer flood. As it became known,

(01:56):
Mary Vanfield and her daughter Hannah died in their house
on New Street as they sat down for tea. Five
people died in the Sellar apartment as they mourned the
death of a child. Eleanor Cooper, was killed as the
building's brickfall collapsed. There were stories of people drinking the
beer and even getting alcohol poisoning, but those were likely

(02:18):
just rumors. Days later, a jury investigated the flood. In
the end, the flood was deemed an act of God
and the deaths caused were ruled an unfortunate accident. The
brewery did not have to pay damages to any of
the victims, and it was able to reclaim the excise
taxes it paid on the beer it lost. The brewery

(02:39):
opened back up soon after the accident and didn't shut
down until more than a century later. I'm each Deathcote
and hopefully you know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. If there's something I missed in
the show today, you can let us know at p
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(03:02):
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(03:24):
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