October 13, 2025 • 58 mins
In 1875, Dublin was flooded with whiskey, literally. When a bonded warehouse in the Liberties district went up in flames, over 300,000 gallons of burning whiskey poured through the streets, turning one of Ireland’s poorest neighborhoods into a fiery river of booze. Firefighters quickly learned that water only made it worse, so they turned to an unlikely hero: horse manure.
Comedians Robert Bacon and guest host Jenna O’Brien (filling in for Mike Kauffman) dive into this bizarre disaster where people didn’t die from fire, but from drinking the flaming whiskey. It’s a true story of chaos, comedy, and cautionary tales about Irish ingenuity gone sideways.
SOURCES
Comedians Robert Bacon and guest host Jenna O’Brien (filling in for Mike Kauffman) dive into this bizarre disaster where people didn’t die from fire, but from drinking the flaming whiskey. It’s a true story of chaos, comedy, and cautionary tales about Irish ingenuity gone sideways.
SOURCES
- The Irish Times (June 21, 1875): descriptions of people scooping whiskey with boots, the wholesale poisoning numbers The Irish TimesThe Pot Still Whiskey Blog
- Irish Examiner (June 21, 1875): “in literal torrents from the doors and windows” Wine Enthusiast
- The Pot Still blog: detailed local reporting, including the dog incident and hospital admissions The Pot Still Whiskey Blog
- Wikipedia: overview of the event, location, fatalities not from direct fire but poisoning Wikipedia
- Wine Enthusiast: recounting the burning river and manure tactics Wine Enthusiast
- Historic Mysteries: supplementary context on the chaos and the nature of the response
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to Mistakes. We're made the podcast where we talk
about mistakes in history and makes jokes about them and
all kinds of stuff. I'm Robert Bacon, and Mike Kaufman
is not joining us this time. I got a special
guest on who I think is directly would know more
about this or can give us better insight onto this
(00:31):
historical event. She just made a face to welcome. Jenna
O'Brien or Sea Lion O'Brien.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hello, I am Jenna, See Lion, Mike Kaufman O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, do you know what this is? Mike Kaufman. Just
pretend if you don't want somebody else to pretend this
is Mike. Oh, that's Mike. That's good, Mike Pittsburg. Jenna,
I used to live in Boston, grew up there, a
big Boston person. But now she she met the love
of her life and followed him all the way back
(01:07):
to the Motherland.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
As people he'll notice me.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, Well, if you weren't so pale and basically see through,
maybe fit right in right in in Ireland. You live
in Ireland?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I do, yes, you don't.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Where do you live in Ireland?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I'm in Galway, Son I mean Galway.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Sonny, I'm excited to know if you already know about this,
I assume you do. But we're going to be talking
about Oh you know what, I'm not going to tell you.
I forgot. We don't even say that. I'm just going
to tell you it's eighteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Five, great year Greateen seventy five, right in the middle
of the famine. Ooh, which one, the great one?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Ooh?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I love that, I believe, don't fact check me on that. Yeah,
somewhere around that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
History is really bad at putting like great in front
of like horrible things, like yeah, the Great Wars they
called the First World War, I thing, the Great Hunger. Yeah.
So in the summer of eighteen seventy five, Dublin was
a city cut between its medieval past and the emerging
industrial age that was kicking in, and it was still
(02:20):
under British rule at the time, which I know you
guys love, I mean, big fan of the Brits. What
would you say even today, even today, what is the
general overall consensus is there's still an actual hatred there or.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
No, there's actually a saying anyone but England.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So when England is playing anyone, whether it's in cricket, football,
whatever sport. It's they don't care who's playing England, they'll
they'll root for the other team.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, I know how that is. I'm a Bears, so
then you know my team sucks. I usually just have
to root against whoever the Packers are playing, or root
for whoever the Packers will play. Yeah, so it's just
would you say that, it's then it's just moved on
to sports like there's like if you met any.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Right, Like no, I mean it depends. It depends where
you are. Some parts of the country maybe still holding
parts of the island maybe, so it's still there.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It's still deep seated within Irish culture.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I would I would say yes in a way.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
All right. Uh so this is Dublin, and Dublin wasn't
the political capital, but it was undeniably one of the
Empire's greatest cities at the time. It was crowded, chaotic,
starkly split between wealth and hardship. Not a lot has changed, uh.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Southside, that's how it goes.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
The grand, elegant Georgian streets of the well off contrasted
sharply with the dense, gritty neighborhoods where the poor lived
in horrible conditions, in bad conditions. In one of those
neighborhoods was called the Liberties. Is this still around you? Yeah?
Your face there. I used to live you used to
(04:21):
live in the Liberties.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah, that's where we lived in Dublin.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Oh okay, so you get back, wow, and you're still
there and none of this has set off anything so far,
eighteen seventy five, you've lived here.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Still not the it's a it's a happening place. It's
got a lot of history, so it could be one
of many things that has happened there.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Okay, that's it's that's true. That's true. So the Liberties
did you know that its name came from the medieval
days where land outside the city walls was giving given
freedom from certain taxes. So back in in eighteen seventeenth,
eighteenth centuries, it was the center for like weaving and
(05:05):
textiles and.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Making a lot of markets and yes, all that stuff,
but I did not know about the tax stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
So from what I understand in this is that you know,
if you're making a bunch of stuff to sell, apparently
back in the day you paid taxes on that, like
as you made it, and then you'd have to pay
for everything that you made for that. So if you
are a big if you were a big company trying
to make a lot of things and you haven't sold
(05:34):
all that yet, the taxes would kind of put you under.
So they kind of made this liberties area where you
could make a bunch of goods and then you don't
have to pay taxes on it until you sell it
or until it's shipped. So it's a good way to
like store things. And I think we still do this
to this day. I don't know. I barely can do.
I can't do my own taxes. I have somebody else
(05:54):
to do.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
They do it. They do our taxes here for us. Really,
I didn't know that was a thing in other countries.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah really they're just like, hey, here's how many hours
you worked and here is what you owe for taxes.
Thank you by bite.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Oh yeah, you know, like what the government should do now,
like they already know. They're like do your taxes, and
you do your taxes and they're like no, wrong, and
be like what if you already knew the answer, then
why didn't you just tell me.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
It's like they have like the three cups with the
ball of tax underneath one, and they shuffled around and
they're like pick one, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Wrong, And if you're and if you're rich, those cups
are clear and there's no ball, so it doesn't matter. Yeah.
So a BYuT eighteen hundred's the textile trade had collapsed,
leaving widespread poverty. You know, the Ireland in a nutshell
in this in these histories. But the Liberties didn't empty out.
(06:50):
People still live there. Instead, new industries moved in and
two of the biggest surprise surprise brewing distilling.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yep, right and well tealings is there now, but I
don't know if it was always, but Jamison's is.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Right, Jamison that's one that shows up in this story.
There's a lot of uh, you know, uh they're whiskeys.
That's what they're known for, Irish whiskies. Right. And by
the nineteenth century, the Liberties had evolved into a hive
of working class life. So basically the Liberties back in
the day, this was the old suburbs. Right, this is
(07:29):
kind of you're right outside the city. You could also
there's a place to work. It's it's right, there's.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Where everyone who worked at the the Guinness store hose
and they just lived there in that area, and.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
It's yeah, there was no cars.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Families are stilled there.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, you'd have to walk to work, so you'd.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Or you know, oh no they in eighteen seventy five
there were no cars.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, there was no cars. There was you had to
like a horse costs money, like, so you got to
live close to where you work. Right. Whiskey was perhaps
the Liberty's most famous export. By the mid eighteen hundreds,
Dublin was one of was the global capital of whiskey production.
(08:14):
Names like Powers, Jamison, Row, and this one George Rose
Thomas Street Distillery. Is that still around any of these?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I don't believe.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
So, okay, these were legendary names, but Jamison came up
on here, so like that's.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Obviously still about it, right, Powers to.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Powers, Okay, they're barrels sat in bonded warehouses in these Liberties,
gathering dust before shipment. So you're making a ton of whiskey.
Obviously it takes time. It has to sit in the barrels,
it has to you know, do all that stuff. And
a bonded warehouse is a secure, government approved facility where
(08:57):
goods can be stored or manufactured without immediate payment on
things like taxes. So that's what this liberty thing is.
It's so they are making a ton of whiskey, leaving
it in barrels and just kind of sitting it there
to be exported.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I can't foresee any problems with this. We're just gonna
put these barrels of whiskey in the middle of the
working class city neighborhoods. Wrong.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So far, I don't see a mistake. So far. It
all makes out.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
This is brilliant.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, So whiskey warehouses and distilleries were built there for
two main reasons I kind of covered got ahead of myself.
Land was cheaper there because you're outside the city. So
just like the suburbs, just like building these giant like
you know, an Amazon warehouse, it's easier to build them,
you know. And that's also where the labor force lived,
you know, that's you were the labor class. That's where
(09:50):
you were, that's where you lived, that's where your parents lived,
you know. And the liberties are one of the cheapest
places to rent in Dublin, so families crowded into narrow
lanes and tenements. So like all these houses you've lived there?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Are there rowhouses? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, it's a lot of row houses. It's very compact, right, Yeah,
they're tiny.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And they actually they would when they built those houses,
you would be taxed on the amount of windows that
you have in you're in the house.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
What. Yeah, that is so then you could just build
a house with no windows and live in a cave
and it would be cheaper.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
I'm sure, like legally there had to be one, but yeah,
and so you would have these houses that like had
four rooms but two windows at the front of it.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Is that still that way to this day or have
people knocked it out?
Speaker 5 (10:44):
No?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
I don't think so. I haven't built many homes here though.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
By the mid nineteenth century, Dublin was one of Europe's
most overcrowded cities. The census records show that some tenements
were these people lived twenty or more people might squeeze
into a single house. So you've you've kind of seen
these these are like how many square feet do you
(11:11):
think it is? Or I guess square foot is? Sorry,
how many square meters?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
What a square meter is?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
How many jenas do you think you could fit in there?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Oh? Okay, how many sea lions.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
How many sea lions can you shove? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Oh god?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Would you say that twenty or more is too many
people to be in one of these?
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Well? Yeah, I mean that you would have these like
one one room to a six or eight people.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, well you're talking we're talking of one window per
ten people based on what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Windows.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, this is just a fart box, is what you've discussed.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
This is why, like I'm assuming cut all those farts
being so close to it distillery disaster.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah. I don't know about you, but when I drink,
I get very farty. Uh so. And another thing about
these they often shared just one water tap or one
toilet among dozens of neighbors.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
So there was there was a toilet.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah. Where where do people in Ireland shit?
Speaker 2 (12:23):
It's it's like a fair shit in the woods off
through the iron ship in the Bond. You know.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I visited Ireland. I didn't see a single toilet. I
think it's like Harry Potter where they get.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Into any of the toilets.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I didn't fit in anywhere in Ireland.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Uh No, you would have like one like a hole
in the ground sort of outhouse for like four houses
in the back alley or something like, and everybody had
chamber pops or just dumped it literally figuratively.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, just dump that's where the that's where dumped comes from.
Welcome to the history of.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Dump Welcome to dump pot.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Welcome to the dump pot. Don't get it in your eyes,
only for your ears.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
This week got dump pot.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
More history of shitting. So in a government inquiry in
the eighteen sixties found that in the Liberties alone, over
a third of families just lived in a single room,
So you had a whole family in one room. Many
families living in those lanes had at least one member
(13:39):
of the family either hauling barrels, making casks, guarding the
bonded stores, or just cleaning the floors of the distillery.
So this is everybody who lived there all shoved into
one house, and everybody that you kind of knew worked
for that distillery. Right. So by the eighteen seventies you
had a surreal mix of chill drink playing in alleyways
(14:02):
next to buildings, storing storing thousands of gallons of high proof.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Alcohol, and highly flammable farts.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
Yes, and the air is just filled with parts gas
and six windows in the whole town and families cooked
over over open flames while a few doors away officers
guarded bonded whiskey worth untold sums so again, So you're
(14:35):
talking about these warehouses are filled with so much money
of whiskey, so you always have to have somebody on
guard making sure that the Irish aren't breaking it down
to suck it all out, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I believe it or not. Safety standards were minimal, Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Warehouses sanitary issue were a thing. Yeah. Safety probably wasn't
number one either. Yeah, Like they had the local donkey,
the graveyard shift.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
That's a good donkey though. That donkey never falls asleep
on the job, always stands right.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
There, Samous the donkey, the hardest worker in the liberties.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
You know, Seamus kicked O'Malley and the jaw killed him
right on the spot.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
From what I know, O'Malley deserved it.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah. Oh, that son of a bitch.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Was the worst wife.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Oh shame, Look and don't tell Seamus. I said this
because I don't want to get kicked. And the john died.
But he's got a good looking wife. That's a good
looking donkey wife. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
It's good looking donkey.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
It's a good looking donkey. And I've seen a lot
of donkeys.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Seen a lot of I'll see a lot of female donkeys.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, And I don't want to sound perverted. That's a
good looking one. I'm not trying to be perverted.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I ask anyone in the Libertyesky one, we'll tell you. Yeah,
it's good looking donkey.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
That's a good looking donkey. Hey, all right, did I
go on a date with the donkey? Yes? I went
on the date with the donkey. It did not go well. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Her sister was miss Liberties eighteen sixty three.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Okay, Oh I had that calendar. You had that donkey calendar.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh I could find piece of asswur Wait? What aw
about all those whiskey bas We're gonna be in so
much trouble?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Oh not again? Uh so get this? So just like
the houses, apparently I didn't know this window thing whatever
this warehouses were also poorly ventilated. Did you know that?
I guess if you don't, if you're like, uh, let's
not have a lot of windows, I guess, why do
(16:52):
we keep all.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
The flats out of our whiskey? It's damaging up products.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah. I took a big swig of this whiskey and
all I could taste was ass. And now I'm not
talking about the.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
HoTT talking about the butt ones, Miss Liberty's eighteen sixty three. Yeah,
and me tells.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
You this tastes like O'Malley's ass.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
So I think our Irish accents are incredible. No, yeah,
you can't beat this tiny dublin.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Well you know what my whole time is like I
don't want to do because there's nothing more than Irish
people hate the English and they hate it when you do.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Their voice, when Irish people do an Irish accent on TV.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So, yes, they hate it, they really hate it. They
do not they do not find it silly, they don't
char No. So these things were poorly ventilated. Their floors
were soaked in leaking spirit. That bread mold and steady.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Kay, that's said, that's some good spirit, have some drinkable spirit.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Well, if you remember from the old Great Molasses flo
episode where like the molasses was just leaking from this
giant container.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Sounds like free molasses to me.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, yeah, it was for all the neighborhood kids that
were eventually killed by the hills. Yeah, we didn't really
have like the whole like water tight barrel thing totally down.
There was always a little bit of leakage seepage, yeah right,
And I mean, to be fair, you give me a
bunch of wood. I mean, like, how am I supposed
(18:29):
to keep them? You know how am I supposed to
make a water type thing? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
You would have never made it back in those times.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
No, so all this leaking spirit and mold and stench.
Guess what that rats that drew a lot of rats
that for the grain and the alcohol. So he got
a bunch of drunk rats around Ireland, or even the rats.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
First kind, the worst kind. They're so needy they'll call
you up at three in the morning and just be like.
I was tacking to him, and I thought we were
going to go home together, and then he started talking
to with no the rats. But I made friends with
some of the rats in the bathroom, and I think
they're my best front Stow.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
You keep going, Stephanie, you keep going.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
I just miss my dad.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Oh we all do, We all do. And you know what,
a lot of us have been tricked by that little
flappy thing. You think you're getting cheese and then a
flappy thing comes down cuts off your head, basically cuts
off your head. And it's you shouldn't have seen that.
I wish you could see that.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I would cut off his head. I hate him.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Okay, all right, you know what, why don't you go back?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
They'll pick up if I call him.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
He's dead.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Why are you using my phone? Is your phone broken again?
Let me see your phone? It's broken. How do you
always break your phone?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
It's just a street. It's the sam sung I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
You can't even swipe on this without cutting your fingers.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I deserve to bleed.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
All right, you know what, don't go back to there, Actually,
don't go back. The whiskey house.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Drunk rats everyone drunk rats so uh.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
And then outside so it's filled with you know, rats
and mold and stench. Outside you had all that manure
from the horse carts. Uh, and then all the refuse
from the nearby tenements.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah manure.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Hated going on shift after him.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
And then there was straw everywhere that was used for
packing the casks, and it was all over the floors.
They put it down on the floors of the warehouse
to soak up the like leaking, uh, leaking whiskey. So
you know it was think of a very foul and flammable.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Place exactly where I want to get my whiskey from exact.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
They don't tell you that when you get whiskey.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, they're like, is this bourbon cask or is this filthy,
rotting manure cast?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Oh well, Maley's been farting into this cask for years. Beautiful,
You're going to really get that ass in there, not
the hot ass.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Eighteen sixty three, Miss Liberties.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
We should make our own whiskey. Call it Miss Liberties.
Have a donkey on there with like lipstick, and.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
People are gonna think it was like cast in eighteen
sixty three. No, nope, nope, nope no. If it was
made in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
In my basement in a Chicago alleyway.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Is just as filthy as eighteen sixty three. Dublin.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Probably one of the warehouses, one of the big ones
at the heart of the Liberties was Malone's bonded warehouse
on Ardi Street.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Does that from Do you okay you've been to my
Dublin apartment.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
I've been to. Yes, I've been there. I don't remember if.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I lived on the rd Cork street.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
You lived on this street? Yes, I knew. There's a
reason why I had to have you on. So you
lived on this street. And you don't know about what
I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I must. I mean, Dublin's got a rich history of tragedies.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
It does. That's true, that's true. But what so I
when I remember when I visited you, you weren't far
from the Guinness for St. Yeah, you weren't far. We
walked to that and we went to the like.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
The you can see when when we were up in
the up in the tower thing and you could you
could see my apartment.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, what's that? The it's like a big if you
ever go to Ireland and you or you go to
Dublin and you want to do the you know, Guinness tour.
It seemed it's a very touristy thing obviously, but it's
very funny.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
You get like the panoram of view of Dublin from
the bar at the top of the thing.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
When I was there, so they only had one and
they were building the seite. There was like a second
glass room.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I don't think I yeah, I don't know if that's
been done anyway.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
It's really cool. So this is the street that you
lived on. R D and it are am I saying
it wrong?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Sitting it like my good friend Adi over here.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Adi. Sorry, alright, it's r D toy t r D.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
There are people protesting outside my window right now.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
What's happening is.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I've made so many people I agree here.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
It's okay. I'm English. Bacon uha uh Artie Street.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Say it again. R D, r D, r D nailed
it and it belonged.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
This belonged to a man named Laurence Malone. Obviously Malone's
been a warehouse and then in June of eighteen seventy five,
Malone's bonded warehouse held around five thousand hogsheads of whiskey.
That's what they called casks of whiskey. They called them hogsheads.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
How many square hogs heads?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Just placed some five thousand square hog seats. So you
got five thousand casks of whiskey. That is three hundred
thousand gallons.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Of Saturday night bacon.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Heyl b got them.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
It's a Saturday night with my friend Addie and stinky futs,
so stinky, so flammable.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
The value of this whiskey was estimated to be about
fifty four thousand pounds, which is a fortune in there.
It's equivalent of millions of dollars today, millions and millions
of dollars. It's a lot of whiskey. And you know
things are bad on this podcast when I have exact times,
(25:06):
well you know, because that's when you know, that's when
you know the shit started. Because somebody like took notes, right.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Someone was like, I got to write this day.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah. At around four forty five pm on June eighteenth,
eighteen seventy five, Malone's warehouse was checked and locked up for.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
The night, checked and locked up by who.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Doesn't say not not by the ass apparently famous not
Seamus Seamus. I think this was seamus off day? Was
this a Thursday? Thursday's there is off days?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, that's his Lord's day.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
So just a few hours later, at eight pm the
night fire alarm bells rang in Malone's warehouse.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And is that just a drunk rat with a bell?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
She'd use her phone, but as we've established, it's broken broken.
I need a charger. I need to charge. How do
you never have charge.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
In your phone's setting a timer instead of setting an alarm?
What's wrong with me?
Speaker 5 (26:21):
So?
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No one knows exactly how the fire started. I mean
could literally bean, could be literally anything.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
I mean, I mean somebody sneezed.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
What this should say is nobody knows how this fire
didn't start sooner, is what it should say.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Drunk rats are trying to light a joint. I'm not drunk,
any boy, can I can.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Smoke a little, it'll bring me down a little.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Well, I'm going to go to sleep.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
So some newspapers just speculated that a careless worker left
a lamp on too close to the casks. Others thought
it was a faulty stove or what they eat?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Why not put a stove in your highly flammable How am.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I supposed to make my my cheesies? My grillers? What
the fuck are they called? There?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Chair? I told you not to bring a hot plate
into the warehouse.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I need to make my What are those things that
are grilled cheeses? What do you guys call toasties is toasties?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
So you guys call toasties.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Also, if you've never been to Ireland, toasties are everywhere.
It's a bit like ham and cheese, ham cheese, a
little bit of onion in there.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Sometimes that's if you want, like the ultimate experience a
little tomato and onion.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Well, when we went on that bus tour and we
went to the cliffs of Moore, mohre mohrrer. Uh see,
I can never see. I can't speak Irish. Uh we
stopped at We stopped at that one place kind of
in the middle of nowhere. That was the best toasty
I had.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
It was you remember the name of that place, that
is it's in Duelin O'Connell's probably.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Okay, oh something, just search for oh something toasties when
you're in Ireland. I'm sure there's like one.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
It's in Duelan. Duel In is like four houses, twelve windows.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, I got there. I'm like, wow, look at all
these windows. Must be rich people. Uh so did I.
Oh and some some of the newspapers papers speculated that
it might have even been spontaneous combustion of whiskey vapors.
That was the thing. Spontaneous combustion was so big because
they didn't you know.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
It was the devil's breath. Satan himself went in that warehouse.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
To get even Satan likes our whiskey. See.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yes, but these would have been all like English press
and English papers. Oh, they would have said that this
is this is very like. Uh. The reverend said that
this was the devil's fault because the Irish Arlie Heathen's here,
We'll still drink their whiskey.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, it's moderation. I did see a headline from the
newspaper at this time that said they deserved it.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I swear it wasn't us this time.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
They're killing themselves. This time.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
We didn't light the fire.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
The fire spread quickly and soon reached the warehouse's wooden casks.
Guess what happened?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
So wait, this fire was the fire started light of
the highly flammable it was.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
On the ground. It was on the ground a little
bit away from the casks, and the fire started and
then it moved.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
To I can only assume that the drunk rats caught
on fire and started running towards the whiskey room.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Now, unfortunately I don't have all the numbers on the
dead rats side. They didn't keep drunking.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
That's that's the English for you.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
So that fire got to the casks and they exploded.
The casts exploded, releasing a torrent of flaming whiskey into
the streets. The Irish Examiner on June twenty first, eighteen
seventy five, described how the spirit poured in literal streams
from the doors and windows of this river of flames
(30:29):
of flaming whiskey, flooding the nearby streets in flaming whiskey
just flooded, pouring out.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I do, I do recall this tale of my old neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Now, the flaming whiskey thing, right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
The streets on fire.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yes, because I think there's even like a whiskey called
like the flaming Pig or something like that. There's like
a lot of like fire and whiskey kind of things
going together. And I think it's a lot from this story.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Hey, you know what, let's just say it is.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
It is.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Stick with your convictions.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
This is this story. Eyewitnesses said that the Whiskey river
was two feet wide and about six inches deep.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
And how many is that.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Square squared? That's about fifty thousand, I don't know. And
it's stretched over about four hundred meters long down Mill Street.
Did you know where that is? I?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yes? So how far away it's in like the block
radius of.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Where you lived? Wow, this is crazy. Here's one vivid
report from the Irish Times that captured the scene, quote
caps pouringers, poor pooringers. These are I don't know how
to say it, because again I don't speak Irish. It's
that there's small bulls like the one that Oliver Twist has,
(31:57):
where it's like.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
A gruel bowl of grule bowl.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
They call him borgers.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Oliver Twist Man, you've got a problem. You need to
You need to cut back on these bowls of whiskey.
I can't keep giving you more.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Please say, I have a problem.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I got out the orphans lined up here who want
to get drunk too.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, but I've I've developed what.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Crrosis at the liver.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I have crhosis, and I need more.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
You can't keep getting back in line and putting on
glasses with a fake nose or drunk. I'm not drunking
everybody else. That's the problem.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
It's not a problem. You're a problem.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
We're all here because we love you. You don't love me.
What's my first name, Dodger? Would you like to read
your letter out loud anyway?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Oliver? This is how you've affected how your alcoholism has
affected me in negative ways. Your porringer is all over
the place. That's not even how you say it.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Oh he told you.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
So.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Caps, small bowls, and other vessels were a great were
used to scoop up the liquor as it flowed from
the burning premise free drink, and as as disgusting as
it may seem, some fellows were observed to take off
their boots and use them as drinking cups. Why not
(33:32):
now we call that, We call that a weapon of
opportunity ingenuity. Yes, where you're like, oh no, I don't
have a cap, I don't have a small bowl out
on my oliver twist bowl I got. I'm gonna instead
of using my hands, I'm going to take off my
boot YEP which has never been cleaned, and drank it.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Down inside or out.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah. So, uh, people weren't the only people getting in
on that free whiskey accents. So there's all this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Those donkeys.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, there's all this burning whiskey is coming from a
building and everybody's just like, better drink it.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Here's a headline from what from the Irish Times as well,
quote a case of canine suicide.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
Oh Tuesday evening, premeditated Tuesday evening, a dog so depressed.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Well have you heard the stories so far have you
heard what I've said? Up these dogs? You know what
dogs love to do, look out the window and bark
at things. And there's not enough windows to look at
the bars.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Too many people.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And all the farts too. So here's what the newspaper said.
Tuesday evening. A dog entered William ayers.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
House e y r e ear Air Williams William Ayer's
house on Dominick Street through an open door. The animal
had consumed so much alcohol that it was quote foaming
at the mouth and apparently either rabid or suffering from
(35:18):
delirium tremens, which is like what alcoholics get. The dog
barked before you before hold on, let your honor hold on,
let me finish this. The dog barked at the owner
ran crazily through the house, knocking over furniture.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
And then the dog. The dog fled upstairs and jumped
out the top floor window and quote finished in its
existence on the road below. Such a poetics way.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I was just gonna say, the Irish are very poetic
in that way. Or did you hear about Mary down
the road? She finished her existence?
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Oh how did she finish it?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
She got drunk and jumped out a window oh, just.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Like me, mom. So, I mean, that's probably the saddest
thing that I read is that a dog got into it.
I didn't know dogs love whiskey, but.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Apparently, Yeah. I have a lot of questions about these
suicidal dogs.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah I don't. I don't really know.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I don't want to call this paper a liar, but
it sounds like fake news to me.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Oh boy, So the Dublin fire Brigade. So Dublin had
a fire.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Brigade at this time, four people in it.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Well, yeah, it was recently formed. This is pretty new,
and it was under the command of Captain James Robert Ingram.
And they arrived in fifteen minutes. That is not a
bad right because this.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Is all horse and carriage. So I hope they didn't
have the dogs leading the horses.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Now we got a bunch of drunk Dalmatians right now,
that's a Disney movie that I'd like to see. I
just want to point out drum Dalmatians and they all
just have broken funds. I really want to say, brand
new fired brigade, horse and buggy, small roads, don't really
(37:32):
know what you're doing. Fifteen minutes to show up. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
All then, what did they do when they showed up.
Were they just like, uh, we didn't get this training.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
We haven't gotten this far. We just get together.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Were like a two story house. That's the best we
can do. Sorry, I'm going to keep the horses from
drinking this because I don't want to pull this truck back.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Well, it's funny you say that, because they quickly realized
that their standard firefighting methods were useless because when you
spray hoses into water flaming whiskey, it just spreads the
flaming whisky.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
It just sends us box of flaming whisky.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, because alcohol floats in water. So it just they came.
They started shooting it with water, and that just caused
it to spread further down the street.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
They were looking for the fire extinguisher with like the
blue tag on it that you're supposed to use for
electrical fires. Nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I can't find it because it hasn't been invented yet.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
I guess the blue tag on it.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
So Captain Ingram and his men had to improvise. So
they first tried shoveling sand and earth onto and gravel onto.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
This was first, or was their first improvisation getting their
boots out. Yeah, we'll drink it down, buys.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
I don't think they did admit that. At first. We
tried to drink it all. Then then we tried to
put it out once we realized we couldn't.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Then Johnny went through somebody's house, knocked over fifteen people
right upstairs, and jumped out.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Just say he was a dog or something.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
He's been having the blues a bit lately.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah, he's been down because his not so attractive donkey
wife left him.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
She did not make the calendar.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
No she have you seen her. That's an ugly donkey.
I'm sorry, I don't say this a lot. That's an ugly, ugly.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Dog from from front and behind, especially especially.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, I got cute kids, even though they don't live there.
One can only say kill me. So they shoveled sand
and earth and gravel onto it to under the flowing
risk Whiskey River, attempting to absorb the alcohol and smother
(39:58):
the flames. This worked, you know, in some spots, but
just the sheer volume of how much it was and
how narrow and congested the streets were, the progress was
really slow because it just kind of kept rolling down
the street.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, it's like trying to put your finger in a
dam of flaming whiskey.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Put your an alcoholic, So you keep taking your finger
out and licking it. I'll put my mouth over it.
I'll put my mouth over it.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
You're not.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
It is it's a whiskey enema is So next they
turned to more unusual materials, horse manure from nearby stables.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Well, come on, wasn't that part of the problem. Don't
be part of the problem. Be part of the solution. Manure.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
I can't hear throw all these matches on it. It's
it out.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
How about how about a whiskey?
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Here we go. I'm just I'm just trying to solve
a problem. All right, we're just doing a.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Scientific guys, coming up with any we're improvising.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
A dog is dead. A dog is dead, one.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Dog and one Johnny's dead.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
If this goes any further, I can get down to
the hot donkey's house.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Oh, I've got to protect the hat shamus.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
So uh they were so. The firemen were eventually figured
out and were able to make like makeshift damns, shoveling
manure and mud and whatever debris that they could in
front of.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
The somebody's been to Holland.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
I know what to do. It's fairly easy. Let me
put down my lollie and I'll help you. It's a
clip clap, clip clap, clip clap, clip clap. Those in
my Dutch shoes. Clip clap, clip clap. The dense fibrous
material soaked up the whiskey, breaking its flow and grating
(42:06):
barriers to stop it from reaching more buildings. Teams worked
in relays, digging into the street and tossing sand, soil,
manure other things.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
They had to recruit some more firefighters at this moment,
that is, they were just like, hey.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
You you're a fight.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Oh finally, I've always wanted to be a firefighter.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
This is this is this is the American dream for
these Irish who went over to Boston. Hey you you're
a firefighter. Now get in here.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yay, I'm six. Oh so this is funny you say that.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Wait those clogs and get.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
In here, kid, clip clopp Oh theylcome anata Dutch boy.
Oh hello, oh hello, we're best friends. Yes, let's never
leave each othersides. Uh, so they did. They had to
get more people to help them. Teams worked in relays
digging into the streets and tossing sand and soil and manures,
(43:05):
and people formed human chains to haul buckets and dirts
into the worst spot. It was filthy, exhausting, and hazardous work,
but it was finally contained and by the next morning
the fire was extinguished, not.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
With water eight o'clock at night into the morning, not dead,
not extinct, but with manure.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Manure, not water. Horseshit. There was more horse shit around.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Than is this hey, is this a sandy horseshit? It's
important to know.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
That don't use that. That horse only drinks whiskey.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Exclusion.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
So property damage across the tenements and the businesses was immense,
but there was also a loss of life. In total,
thirteen people died from this tragedy, but not a single
one of them from burns or smoke. Every single it
(44:15):
was one of those people.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
It was a slow burn.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
It was the alcohol poisoning from people sucking down street whiskey.
Thirteen people died. It was said that everyone was drinking it, everybody,
So I didn't point this out. There's people trying to
put it out, but the majority of people were not
(44:40):
trying to put it out. They were focused on drinking
the whiskey.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
You know, and I the Irons should been so stereotyped.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
I wonder why.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
I wonder, And then you hear a story like this
tough to defend.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
There, so out of the thirteen people, there was an
untold amount of number because they didn't they don't really
keep good accounts of this. But so much alcohol poisoning
so much, like I don't understand. So I understand. It's like,
oh my god, I'm poor. I love whiskey. Here it is.
There's a bunch of free whiskey. You don't have to
(45:25):
drink it immediately.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Don't have to save it in the boot, say, put
it in in the.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Christmas cupboard, anything, get a jar, like, start hoarding the whiskey.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
I can only assume that they thought that this was
this was the end of times, this was a biblical plague. Yeah,
maybe whiskey coming through the streets.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Yeah, okay. Maybe in their defense, everybody thought that they
were gonna die, you know, like there was just fire
all around them, and they're like, well, might as well
get super drunk.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Something else to do. I guess I'll never marry the
hot donkey.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, and you know what, that was my dream Shamus.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
The donkeys Shamus can't live forever.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I mean, and so, to be fair, I bet you
that thought didn't even cross our mind because obviously they
probably could only pay for so much whiskey, and they
just drank as much whiskey as they could pay for
and then they were done.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
So to have like, yeah, you're working for like the
big wig companies, and all of a sudden you get
the stuff for free, you might as might as well indulge.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, and it just comes at you. I mean, yeah,
you're living a shitty life.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
What damn the man?
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, damn the man. That's what kind of was I did?
I got? I got fine. I only was able to
find information on one person who died because this is
this is another time too, where like if you died
from something like this, it was shameful for your family,
So like names weren't.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Giving out, and also the people running the newspapers couldn't
care less. It was just another low status worker.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Yeah. So the one person I found. His name was
William Smith, which sounds like a fake name. He was
twenty one years old.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
It feels like a very English name.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yes he was, he was twenty one.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Then Liam o'ness, yes, William Smith.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Uh. He scooped it up with his cupped hands and
was drinking it until he fell unconscious. He was carried
to the hospital. He was treated. He briefly regained consciousness
the day. Yes, Hi got call my ex girlfriend real quick,
I gots I go. It's growing a voicemail again. I
(47:56):
think she blocked my number.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Pickup Angela Agile lot Aga.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
I drank so much Street with the Angel life Change.
I don't want to fuck donkeys anymore.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I want to except that one was in the eighteen
sixty three Miss Liberties.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
But she's my path. You said she's my past.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
I can have a pass other time, my celebrity past.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah, we all do, just because you walked in. I'll
be drinking off to that calendar. Who I got a
lot more to say, but I think I might be dying.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yep. Just hold the pillow over his face, nurse, We'll
just say he died whiskey drinking.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
As the disaster came into focus, the Lord Mayor. I
love this Lord Mayor Peter Paul McSweeney. Mm hmmm, yeah,
that's a Irish right.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
But you see the one who became the pope.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
I think so. I think that's the Irish Pope. Peter
Paul McSweeney commented that it was quote wonderful that Moore
hadn't died.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
He thought, his blessings. It's a very pessimistic Irish cling
to do.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Could have been worse, could have been worse, could have
been you know, could have been fourteen people that died.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Could have been six thousand casks of whiskey gone.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
Yeah, and what do we do then? Huh what about
happy hour? If that' would have happened?
Speaker 2 (49:29):
She just imagine.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah, So he said, yeah, there was wonderful more people
and died. He thought that the overdoses were sadly inevitable
in a city that had a tendency towards immoderate drinking.
So he just basically said like, hey, yeah, we're a
bunch of we have a drinking problem in the Liberties here.
(49:52):
And I'm kind of surprised that more people didn't die.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
I mean, it was it was bound to happen.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah, I mean, considering considering everything that I kind of
set this up for, were you kind of maybe expecting
more deaths.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Yes, especially like in a warehouse and fire, but the
timing being in the evening when there there weren't many
people loading casks in and out, and lots of you know,
kids playing in the street exactly.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, then catching fire and then running into people's house,
knocking over the fronture and then jumping out of I
think that because it happened later at night, that that's
exactly why, like it.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Was, Yeah, just count your blessings. I also wonder like,
because like these were being stored there were they not ready?
Were they not fully like distilled and ready for consumption?
Speaker 1 (50:48):
They were? They were, they were, so it was all distilled.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
It was just it was drinkable whiskey, and it was
so much that they died immediately.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yes, The Great Dublin Whisky Fire of eighteen seventy five
lives on as one of the oddest disasters in Irish history.
A night when a river of burning whiskey ran through
a crowded neighborhood, when firemen fought ablaze with horse manure,
and people died not from flames but from their own
(51:20):
thirst and farts and farts. I'm going to put the
sources in the show description if you want to check
those out, if you want to double check my thing.
I wouldn't do you know a report based on what
you heard on this? I would do some of my
(51:40):
own research.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
And also, it's been bothering me since I said it
the Great Famine or the Great Hunger here was eighteen
forty five to eighteen fifty two, so before this, before this.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
So everyone, Oh, maybe that's why because people generations had
lived with so little, maybe you know, and then by
the time you get this, you have So I think
that's honestly what it is. It's you have so little.
Oh my god, now I have everything, and they just
over indulge.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
It has to be. It has to be. It's like that,
just like war hoarding tendency, or like.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
When you know, when you uh, you've heard the stories
about people who haven't eaten for like days or weeks
and then they yeah, and then they eat and then
they die.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
Yep, well, right, could have been worse, could.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Have So there you go. There's the Great Dublin Fire.
It happened on your street that you lived on.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
It literally did. And I'm assuming that this warehouse space
is where the Tealings distillery is now, or you know,
after it burned down. The developers who built my condo unit,
we're like Hey, I know do with this.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
We'll just we'll just build it on top of all
this soaked straw.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
You know there's whiskey manure.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Yeah, so yeah, what do you how do you? How
do you feel? How do you feel about after hearing
that story?
Speaker 2 (53:06):
But I feel bad for living in that neighborhood and
not knowing the details of this story. But again, it
was a it was a neighborhood that has seen a
lot of tragedy through the years. And yeah, it's it's
it's very interesting and I think again it is definitely
(53:27):
like knowing the political and economic history of that area
and time does not surprise me because it was a
very poor working class. But it just seems that so
obvious safety concerns were just I just know nobody thought
(53:50):
of this thought. We we know that alcohol is flammable,
wood is flammable. Rats are flab flammable.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Trust me, I've tried. I've burned so many rats. Flammable.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Horse farts are also flammable. Let's shove them all into
this tiny area with stoves.
Speaker 1 (54:16):
Yeah, and let's you know what, everybody live right next
to it, like build houses right.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Next to it, right on top of it.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
On top of it even. Yeah, I mean the first
time I heard it, I was like, haha, that's funny.
These people drank themselves to death ha ha ha. But
you know, once you start to learn about the story,
you understand it's very understandable how this could happen and
how people behaved that way.
Speaker 2 (54:41):
Like, I mean, maybe like everyone I went to college
with who got alcohol poisoning and had to get their
stomachs pumped in the hospital, like they weren't drinking flaming whiskey. Yeah,
so maybe it is possible to consume so much in
so little time that you do. Just I mean, it's
(55:02):
not like they were going and getting their stomachs pumped.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
Well yeah, well you gotta yeah, you gotta think a
whole boot of whiskey is a lot of whiskey. That's see.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Willy big feet.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Spoom plump plump plump. Hey. You know I don't like
that nickname.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
Stop at Willy big feet. You know what we mean
when we say it and my.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
Dick is big what gross?
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Ah?
Speaker 3 (55:32):
Everyone knows I got a tiny dick a big feet.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Ah. Yeah, I think it's a It's sad. The whole story. Uh,
mistakes were definitely made by the storage of it. I
think hopefully maybe they learned something from that tragedy and
there was some better storage. I don't know. It's a
human life wasn't valued the same as it was.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Neither was dog life especially.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
I mean if you were a human it was hard enough,
let alone being an animal. You know, like nobody that
guy could have just been like, oh, now's my time
to kill this dog. You know, he could have been
a bad person or something.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
Also, the Dublin Fire Brigrade is still just down the
road from that area in Dolphin's Barn.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
Oh and shout out to them. You have a history
of act being on time, and you know so many
of these stories. It's like and then the fire department
showed up and they got in a fight with another
fire department about who gets to put it out?
Speaker 2 (56:36):
You know, like yeah, famous firefighter barrals they happened.
Speaker 1 (56:43):
Yeah, if you didn't like that, could be maybe one
of them. I mean, maybe I'll look at the jurisdiction.
It is because you got paid by the people that
after you put out the fire. So if some other
fire fighters showed up and then put out the fire,
they would get the money, so they'd start fighting each
other as the building was burning down.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
No, lie, and that is still a thing here. The
fire department has to come out to your house. You
have to pay them. It's not a like a freeze.
Speaker 1 (57:10):
One thing that's worse about Ireland than America. One thing
we get free firefighters.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
I could be horribly mistaken, but I'm sware my husband
did say that because it was wild to me.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
Wow. Well, I just my house burned down and I
lost all my belongings and I have no money. Oh
and here's a bill from the fire department.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
Wow. All right, Well, suck on that, Ireland. We got
one thing on you, all right. I mean I don't
know how good your post offices are pretty.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Good, but I mean our post office is also like
a bank.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
It's like a Walgreens tourist office.
Speaker 2 (57:49):
It's you could do anything there.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
All right.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Well, got prescriptions.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
That's it, you know. Maybe I'll look in your neighborhood
see if there's you know, some more stories, or if
you have something that you want to talk about, we
can come on and do another Mistakes remain. Please leave
us a review on whatever podcasting platform you listen to.
Speaker 2 (58:08):
If you still and remember that I'm Mike Kaufman, and.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
I'm Mike Kaufman, and we're all Mike Kaufman's and that's
all I gotta say. Uh, stay subscribed. Maybe in like
a little bit will be another Mistakes were made. Thanks
for coming on the show, Jenna, You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (58:28):
I'm Mike Coffman. Sorry you almost tricked me there
Welcome to Mistakes. We're made the podcast where we talk
about mistakes in history and makes jokes about them and
all kinds of stuff. I'm Robert Bacon, and Mike Kaufman
is not joining us this time. I got a special
guest on who I think is directly would know more
about this or can give us better insight onto this
(00:31):
historical event. She just made a face to welcome. Jenna
O'Brien or Sea Lion O'Brien.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hello, I am Jenna, See Lion, Mike Kaufman O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, do you know what this is? Mike Kaufman. Just
pretend if you don't want somebody else to pretend this
is Mike. Oh, that's Mike. That's good, Mike Pittsburg. Jenna,
I used to live in Boston, grew up there, a
big Boston person. But now she she met the love
of her life and followed him all the way back
(01:07):
to the Motherland.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
As people he'll notice me.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, Well, if you weren't so pale and basically see through,
maybe fit right in right in in Ireland. You live
in Ireland?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I do, yes, you don't.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Where do you live in Ireland?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I'm in Galway, Son I mean Galway.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Sonny, I'm excited to know if you already know about this,
I assume you do. But we're going to be talking
about Oh you know what, I'm not going to tell you.
I forgot. We don't even say that. I'm just going
to tell you it's eighteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Five, great year Greateen seventy five, right in the middle
of the famine. Ooh, which one, the great one?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Ooh?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I love that, I believe, don't fact check me on that. Yeah,
somewhere around that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
History is really bad at putting like great in front
of like horrible things, like yeah, the Great Wars they
called the First World War, I thing, the Great Hunger. Yeah.
So in the summer of eighteen seventy five, Dublin was
a city cut between its medieval past and the emerging
industrial age that was kicking in, and it was still
(02:20):
under British rule at the time, which I know you
guys love, I mean, big fan of the Brits. What
would you say even today, even today, what is the
general overall consensus is there's still an actual hatred there or.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
No, there's actually a saying anyone but England.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So when England is playing anyone, whether it's in cricket, football,
whatever sport. It's they don't care who's playing England, they'll
they'll root for the other team.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, I know how that is. I'm a Bears, so
then you know my team sucks. I usually just have
to root against whoever the Packers are playing, or root
for whoever the Packers will play. Yeah, so it's just
would you say that, it's then it's just moved on
to sports like there's like if you met any.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Right, Like no, I mean it depends. It depends where
you are. Some parts of the country maybe still holding
parts of the island maybe, so it's still there.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It's still deep seated within Irish culture.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I would I would say yes in a way.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
All right. Uh so this is Dublin, and Dublin wasn't
the political capital, but it was undeniably one of the
Empire's greatest cities at the time. It was crowded, chaotic,
starkly split between wealth and hardship. Not a lot has changed, uh.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Southside, that's how it goes.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
The grand, elegant Georgian streets of the well off contrasted
sharply with the dense, gritty neighborhoods where the poor lived
in horrible conditions, in bad conditions. In one of those
neighborhoods was called the Liberties. Is this still around you? Yeah?
Your face there. I used to live you used to
(04:21):
live in the Liberties.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah, that's where we lived in Dublin.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Oh okay, so you get back, wow, and you're still
there and none of this has set off anything so far,
eighteen seventy five, you've lived here.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Still not the it's a it's a happening place. It's
got a lot of history, so it could be one
of many things that has happened there.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Okay, that's it's that's true. That's true. So the Liberties
did you know that its name came from the medieval
days where land outside the city walls was giving given
freedom from certain taxes. So back in in eighteen seventeenth,
eighteenth centuries, it was the center for like weaving and
(05:05):
textiles and.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Making a lot of markets and yes, all that stuff,
but I did not know about the tax stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
So from what I understand in this is that you know,
if you're making a bunch of stuff to sell, apparently
back in the day you paid taxes on that, like
as you made it, and then you'd have to pay
for everything that you made for that. So if you
are a big if you were a big company trying
to make a lot of things and you haven't sold
(05:34):
all that yet, the taxes would kind of put you under.
So they kind of made this liberties area where you
could make a bunch of goods and then you don't
have to pay taxes on it until you sell it
or until it's shipped. So it's a good way to
like store things. And I think we still do this
to this day. I don't know. I barely can do.
I can't do my own taxes. I have somebody else
(05:54):
to do.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
They do it. They do our taxes here for us. Really,
I didn't know that was a thing in other countries.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah really they're just like, hey, here's how many hours
you worked and here is what you owe for taxes.
Thank you by bite.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Oh yeah, you know, like what the government should do now,
like they already know. They're like do your taxes, and
you do your taxes and they're like no, wrong, and
be like what if you already knew the answer, then
why didn't you just tell me.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
It's like they have like the three cups with the
ball of tax underneath one, and they shuffled around and
they're like pick one, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Wrong, And if you're and if you're rich, those cups
are clear and there's no ball, so it doesn't matter. Yeah.
So a BYuT eighteen hundred's the textile trade had collapsed,
leaving widespread poverty. You know, the Ireland in a nutshell
in this in these histories. But the Liberties didn't empty out.
(06:50):
People still live there. Instead, new industries moved in and
two of the biggest surprise surprise brewing distilling.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yep, right and well tealings is there now, but I
don't know if it was always, but Jamison's is.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Right, Jamison that's one that shows up in this story.
There's a lot of uh, you know, uh they're whiskeys.
That's what they're known for, Irish whiskies. Right. And by
the nineteenth century, the Liberties had evolved into a hive
of working class life. So basically the Liberties back in
the day, this was the old suburbs. Right, this is
(07:29):
kind of you're right outside the city. You could also
there's a place to work. It's it's right, there's.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Where everyone who worked at the the Guinness store hose
and they just lived there in that area, and.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
It's yeah, there was no cars.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Families are stilled there.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, you'd have to walk to work, so you'd.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Or you know, oh no they in eighteen seventy five
there were no cars.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, there was no cars. There was you had to
like a horse costs money, like, so you got to
live close to where you work. Right. Whiskey was perhaps
the Liberty's most famous export. By the mid eighteen hundreds,
Dublin was one of was the global capital of whiskey production.
(08:14):
Names like Powers, Jamison, Row, and this one George Rose
Thomas Street Distillery. Is that still around any of these?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I don't believe.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
So, okay, these were legendary names, but Jamison came up
on here, so like that's.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Obviously still about it, right, Powers to.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Powers, Okay, they're barrels sat in bonded warehouses in these Liberties,
gathering dust before shipment. So you're making a ton of whiskey.
Obviously it takes time. It has to sit in the barrels,
it has to you know, do all that stuff. And
a bonded warehouse is a secure, government approved facility where
(08:57):
goods can be stored or manufactured without immediate payment on
things like taxes. So that's what this liberty thing is.
It's so they are making a ton of whiskey, leaving
it in barrels and just kind of sitting it there
to be exported.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I can't foresee any problems with this. We're just gonna
put these barrels of whiskey in the middle of the
working class city neighborhoods. Wrong.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So far, I don't see a mistake. So far. It
all makes out.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
This is brilliant.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, So whiskey warehouses and distilleries were built there for
two main reasons I kind of covered got ahead of myself.
Land was cheaper there because you're outside the city. So
just like the suburbs, just like building these giant like
you know, an Amazon warehouse, it's easier to build them,
you know. And that's also where the labor force lived,
you know, that's you were the labor class. That's where
(09:50):
you were, that's where you lived, that's where your parents lived,
you know. And the liberties are one of the cheapest
places to rent in Dublin, so families crowded into narrow
lanes and tenements. So like all these houses you've lived there?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Are there rowhouses? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, it's a lot of row houses. It's very compact, right, Yeah,
they're tiny.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And they actually they would when they built those houses,
you would be taxed on the amount of windows that
you have in you're in the house.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
What. Yeah, that is so then you could just build
a house with no windows and live in a cave
and it would be cheaper.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
I'm sure, like legally there had to be one, but yeah,
and so you would have these houses that like had
four rooms but two windows at the front of it.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Is that still that way to this day or have
people knocked it out?
Speaker 5 (10:44):
No?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
I don't think so. I haven't built many homes here though.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
By the mid nineteenth century, Dublin was one of Europe's
most overcrowded cities. The census records show that some tenements
were these people lived twenty or more people might squeeze
into a single house. So you've you've kind of seen
these these are like how many square feet do you
(11:11):
think it is? Or I guess square foot is? Sorry,
how many square meters?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
What a square meter is?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
How many jenas do you think you could fit in there?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Oh? Okay, how many sea lions.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
How many sea lions can you shove? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Oh god?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Would you say that twenty or more is too many
people to be in one of these?
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Well? Yeah, I mean that you would have these like
one one room to a six or eight people.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, well you're talking we're talking of one window per
ten people based on what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Windows.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, this is just a fart box, is what you've discussed.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
This is why, like I'm assuming cut all those farts
being so close to it distillery disaster.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah. I don't know about you, but when I drink,
I get very farty. Uh so. And another thing about
these they often shared just one water tap or one
toilet among dozens of neighbors.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
So there was there was a toilet.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah. Where where do people in Ireland shit?
Speaker 2 (12:23):
It's it's like a fair shit in the woods off
through the iron ship in the Bond. You know.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I visited Ireland. I didn't see a single toilet. I
think it's like Harry Potter where they get.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Into any of the toilets.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I didn't fit in anywhere in Ireland.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Uh No, you would have like one like a hole
in the ground sort of outhouse for like four houses
in the back alley or something like, and everybody had
chamber pops or just dumped it literally figuratively.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, just dump that's where the that's where dumped comes from.
Welcome to the history of.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Dump Welcome to dump pot.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Welcome to the dump pot. Don't get it in your eyes,
only for your ears.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
This week got dump pot.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
More history of shitting. So in a government inquiry in
the eighteen sixties found that in the Liberties alone, over
a third of families just lived in a single room,
So you had a whole family in one room. Many
families living in those lanes had at least one member
(13:39):
of the family either hauling barrels, making casks, guarding the
bonded stores, or just cleaning the floors of the distillery.
So this is everybody who lived there all shoved into
one house, and everybody that you kind of knew worked
for that distillery. Right. So by the eighteen seventies you
had a surreal mix of chill drink playing in alleyways
(14:02):
next to buildings, storing storing thousands of gallons of high proof.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Alcohol, and highly flammable farts.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
Yes, and the air is just filled with parts gas
and six windows in the whole town and families cooked
over over open flames while a few doors away officers
guarded bonded whiskey worth untold sums so again, So you're
(14:35):
talking about these warehouses are filled with so much money
of whiskey, so you always have to have somebody on
guard making sure that the Irish aren't breaking it down
to suck it all out, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I believe it or not. Safety standards were minimal, Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Warehouses sanitary issue were a thing. Yeah. Safety probably wasn't
number one either. Yeah, Like they had the local donkey,
the graveyard shift.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
That's a good donkey though. That donkey never falls asleep
on the job, always stands right.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
There, Samous the donkey, the hardest worker in the liberties.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
You know, Seamus kicked O'Malley and the jaw killed him
right on the spot.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
From what I know, O'Malley deserved it.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah. Oh, that son of a bitch.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Was the worst wife.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Oh shame, Look and don't tell Seamus. I said this
because I don't want to get kicked. And the john died.
But he's got a good looking wife. That's a good
looking donkey wife. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
It's good looking donkey.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
It's a good looking donkey. And I've seen a lot
of donkeys.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Seen a lot of I'll see a lot of female donkeys.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, And I don't want to sound perverted. That's a
good looking one. I'm not trying to be perverted.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I ask anyone in the Libertyesky one, we'll tell you. Yeah,
it's good looking donkey.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
That's a good looking donkey. Hey, all right, did I
go on a date with the donkey? Yes? I went
on the date with the donkey. It did not go well. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Her sister was miss Liberties eighteen sixty three.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Okay, Oh I had that calendar. You had that donkey calendar.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh I could find piece of asswur Wait? What aw
about all those whiskey bas We're gonna be in so
much trouble?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Oh not again? Uh so get this? So just like
the houses, apparently I didn't know this window thing whatever
this warehouses were also poorly ventilated. Did you know that?
I guess if you don't, if you're like, uh, let's
not have a lot of windows, I guess, why do
(16:52):
we keep all.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
The flats out of our whiskey? It's damaging up products.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah. I took a big swig of this whiskey and
all I could taste was ass. And now I'm not
talking about the.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
HoTT talking about the butt ones, Miss Liberty's eighteen sixty three. Yeah,
and me tells.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
You this tastes like O'Malley's ass.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
So I think our Irish accents are incredible. No, yeah,
you can't beat this tiny dublin.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Well you know what my whole time is like I
don't want to do because there's nothing more than Irish
people hate the English and they hate it when you do.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Their voice, when Irish people do an Irish accent on TV.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So, yes, they hate it, they really hate it. They
do not they do not find it silly, they don't
char No. So these things were poorly ventilated. Their floors
were soaked in leaking spirit. That bread mold and steady.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Kay, that's said, that's some good spirit, have some drinkable spirit.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Well, if you remember from the old Great Molasses flo
episode where like the molasses was just leaking from this
giant container.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Sounds like free molasses to me.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, yeah, it was for all the neighborhood kids that
were eventually killed by the hills. Yeah, we didn't really
have like the whole like water tight barrel thing totally down.
There was always a little bit of leakage seepage, yeah right,
And I mean, to be fair, you give me a
bunch of wood. I mean, like, how am I supposed
(18:29):
to keep them? You know how am I supposed to
make a water type thing? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
You would have never made it back in those times.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
No, so all this leaking spirit and mold and stench.
Guess what that rats that drew a lot of rats
that for the grain and the alcohol. So he got
a bunch of drunk rats around Ireland, or even the rats.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
First kind, the worst kind. They're so needy they'll call
you up at three in the morning and just be like.
I was tacking to him, and I thought we were
going to go home together, and then he started talking
to with no the rats. But I made friends with
some of the rats in the bathroom, and I think
they're my best front Stow.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
You keep going, Stephanie, you keep going.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
I just miss my dad.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Oh we all do, We all do. And you know what,
a lot of us have been tricked by that little
flappy thing. You think you're getting cheese and then a
flappy thing comes down cuts off your head, basically cuts
off your head. And it's you shouldn't have seen that.
I wish you could see that.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I would cut off his head. I hate him.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Okay, all right, you know what, why don't you go back?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
They'll pick up if I call him.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
He's dead.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Why are you using my phone? Is your phone broken again?
Let me see your phone? It's broken. How do you
always break your phone?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
It's just a street. It's the sam sung I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
You can't even swipe on this without cutting your fingers.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I deserve to bleed.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
All right, you know what, don't go back to there, Actually,
don't go back. The whiskey house.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Drunk rats everyone drunk rats so uh.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
And then outside so it's filled with you know, rats
and mold and stench. Outside you had all that manure
from the horse carts. Uh, and then all the refuse
from the nearby tenements.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah manure.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Hated going on shift after him.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
And then there was straw everywhere that was used for
packing the casks, and it was all over the floors.
They put it down on the floors of the warehouse
to soak up the like leaking, uh, leaking whiskey. So
you know it was think of a very foul and flammable.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Place exactly where I want to get my whiskey from exact.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
They don't tell you that when you get whiskey.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, they're like, is this bourbon cask or is this filthy,
rotting manure cast?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Oh well, Maley's been farting into this cask for years. Beautiful,
You're going to really get that ass in there, not
the hot ass.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Eighteen sixty three, Miss Liberties.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
We should make our own whiskey. Call it Miss Liberties.
Have a donkey on there with like lipstick, and.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
People are gonna think it was like cast in eighteen
sixty three. No, nope, nope, nope no. If it was
made in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
In my basement in a Chicago alleyway.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Is just as filthy as eighteen sixty three. Dublin.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Probably one of the warehouses, one of the big ones
at the heart of the Liberties was Malone's bonded warehouse
on Ardi Street.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Does that from Do you okay you've been to my
Dublin apartment.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
I've been to. Yes, I've been there. I don't remember if.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I lived on the rd Cork street.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
You lived on this street? Yes, I knew. There's a
reason why I had to have you on. So you
lived on this street. And you don't know about what
I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I must. I mean, Dublin's got a rich history of tragedies.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
It does. That's true, that's true. But what so I
when I remember when I visited you, you weren't far
from the Guinness for St. Yeah, you weren't far. We
walked to that and we went to the like.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
The you can see when when we were up in
the up in the tower thing and you could you
could see my apartment.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, what's that? The it's like a big if you
ever go to Ireland and you or you go to
Dublin and you want to do the you know, Guinness tour.
It seemed it's a very touristy thing obviously, but it's
very funny.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
You get like the panoram of view of Dublin from
the bar at the top of the thing.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
When I was there, so they only had one and
they were building the seite. There was like a second
glass room.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I don't think I yeah, I don't know if that's
been done anyway.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
It's really cool. So this is the street that you
lived on. R D and it are am I saying
it wrong?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Sitting it like my good friend Adi over here.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Adi. Sorry, alright, it's r D toy t r D.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
There are people protesting outside my window right now.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
What's happening is.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I've made so many people I agree here.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
It's okay. I'm English. Bacon uha uh Artie Street.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Say it again. R D, r D, r D nailed
it and it belonged.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
This belonged to a man named Laurence Malone. Obviously Malone's
been a warehouse and then in June of eighteen seventy five,
Malone's bonded warehouse held around five thousand hogsheads of whiskey.
That's what they called casks of whiskey. They called them hogsheads.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
How many square hogs heads?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Just placed some five thousand square hog seats. So you
got five thousand casks of whiskey. That is three hundred
thousand gallons.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Of Saturday night bacon.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Heyl b got them.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
It's a Saturday night with my friend Addie and stinky futs,
so stinky, so flammable.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
The value of this whiskey was estimated to be about
fifty four thousand pounds, which is a fortune in there.
It's equivalent of millions of dollars today, millions and millions
of dollars. It's a lot of whiskey. And you know
things are bad on this podcast when I have exact times,
(25:06):
well you know, because that's when you know, that's when
you know the shit started. Because somebody like took notes, right.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Someone was like, I got to write this day.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah. At around four forty five pm on June eighteenth,
eighteen seventy five, Malone's warehouse was checked and locked up for.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
The night, checked and locked up by who.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Doesn't say not not by the ass apparently famous not
Seamus Seamus. I think this was seamus off day? Was
this a Thursday? Thursday's there is off days?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, that's his Lord's day.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
So just a few hours later, at eight pm the
night fire alarm bells rang in Malone's warehouse.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And is that just a drunk rat with a bell?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
She'd use her phone, but as we've established, it's broken broken.
I need a charger. I need to charge. How do
you never have charge.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
In your phone's setting a timer instead of setting an alarm?
What's wrong with me?
Speaker 5 (26:21):
So?
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No one knows exactly how the fire started. I mean
could literally bean, could be literally anything.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
I mean, I mean somebody sneezed.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
What this should say is nobody knows how this fire
didn't start sooner, is what it should say.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Drunk rats are trying to light a joint. I'm not drunk,
any boy, can I can.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Smoke a little, it'll bring me down a little.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Well, I'm going to go to sleep.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
So some newspapers just speculated that a careless worker left
a lamp on too close to the casks. Others thought
it was a faulty stove or what they eat?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Why not put a stove in your highly flammable How am.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I supposed to make my my cheesies? My grillers? What
the fuck are they called? There?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Chair? I told you not to bring a hot plate
into the warehouse.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I need to make my What are those things that
are grilled cheeses? What do you guys call toasties is toasties?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
So you guys call toasties.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Also, if you've never been to Ireland, toasties are everywhere.
It's a bit like ham and cheese, ham cheese, a
little bit of onion in there.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Sometimes that's if you want, like the ultimate experience a
little tomato and onion.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Well, when we went on that bus tour and we
went to the cliffs of Moore, mohre mohrrer. Uh see,
I can never see. I can't speak Irish. Uh we
stopped at We stopped at that one place kind of
in the middle of nowhere. That was the best toasty
I had.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
It was you remember the name of that place, that
is it's in Duelin O'Connell's probably.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Okay, oh something, just search for oh something toasties when
you're in Ireland. I'm sure there's like one.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
It's in Duelan. Duel In is like four houses, twelve windows.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, I got there. I'm like, wow, look at all
these windows. Must be rich people. Uh so did I.
Oh and some some of the newspapers papers speculated that
it might have even been spontaneous combustion of whiskey vapors.
That was the thing. Spontaneous combustion was so big because
they didn't you know.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
It was the devil's breath. Satan himself went in that warehouse.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
To get even Satan likes our whiskey. See.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yes, but these would have been all like English press
and English papers. Oh, they would have said that this
is this is very like. Uh. The reverend said that
this was the devil's fault because the Irish Arlie Heathen's here,
We'll still drink their whiskey.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, it's moderation. I did see a headline from the
newspaper at this time that said they deserved it.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I swear it wasn't us this time.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
They're killing themselves. This time.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
We didn't light the fire.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
The fire spread quickly and soon reached the warehouse's wooden casks.
Guess what happened?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
So wait, this fire was the fire started light of
the highly flammable it was.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
On the ground. It was on the ground a little
bit away from the casks, and the fire started and
then it moved.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
To I can only assume that the drunk rats caught
on fire and started running towards the whiskey room.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Now, unfortunately I don't have all the numbers on the
dead rats side. They didn't keep drunking.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
That's that's the English for you.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
So that fire got to the casks and they exploded.
The casts exploded, releasing a torrent of flaming whiskey into
the streets. The Irish Examiner on June twenty first, eighteen
seventy five, described how the spirit poured in literal streams
from the doors and windows of this river of flames
(30:29):
of flaming whiskey, flooding the nearby streets in flaming whiskey
just flooded, pouring out.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I do, I do recall this tale of my old neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Now, the flaming whiskey thing, right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
The streets on fire.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yes, because I think there's even like a whiskey called
like the flaming Pig or something like that. There's like
a lot of like fire and whiskey kind of things
going together. And I think it's a lot from this story.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Hey, you know what, let's just say it is.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
It is.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Stick with your convictions.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
This is this story. Eyewitnesses said that the Whiskey river
was two feet wide and about six inches deep.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
And how many is that.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Square squared? That's about fifty thousand, I don't know. And
it's stretched over about four hundred meters long down Mill Street.
Did you know where that is? I?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yes? So how far away it's in like the block
radius of.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Where you lived? Wow, this is crazy. Here's one vivid
report from the Irish Times that captured the scene, quote
caps pouringers, poor pooringers. These are I don't know how
to say it, because again I don't speak Irish. It's
that there's small bulls like the one that Oliver Twist has,
(31:57):
where it's like.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
A gruel bowl of grule bowl.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
They call him borgers.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Oliver Twist Man, you've got a problem. You need to
You need to cut back on these bowls of whiskey.
I can't keep giving you more.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Please say, I have a problem.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I got out the orphans lined up here who want
to get drunk too.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, but I've I've developed what.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Crrosis at the liver.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I have crhosis, and I need more.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
You can't keep getting back in line and putting on
glasses with a fake nose or drunk. I'm not drunking
everybody else. That's the problem.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
It's not a problem. You're a problem.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
We're all here because we love you. You don't love me.
What's my first name, Dodger? Would you like to read
your letter out loud anyway?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Oliver? This is how you've affected how your alcoholism has
affected me in negative ways. Your porringer is all over
the place. That's not even how you say it.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Oh he told you.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
So.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Caps, small bowls, and other vessels were a great were
used to scoop up the liquor as it flowed from
the burning premise free drink, and as as disgusting as
it may seem, some fellows were observed to take off
their boots and use them as drinking cups. Why not
(33:32):
now we call that, We call that a weapon of
opportunity ingenuity. Yes, where you're like, oh no, I don't
have a cap, I don't have a small bowl out
on my oliver twist bowl I got. I'm gonna instead
of using my hands, I'm going to take off my
boot YEP which has never been cleaned, and drank it.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Down inside or out.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah. So, uh, people weren't the only people getting in
on that free whiskey accents. So there's all this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Those donkeys.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, there's all this burning whiskey is coming from a
building and everybody's just like, better drink it.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Here's a headline from what from the Irish Times as well,
quote a case of canine suicide.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
Oh Tuesday evening, premeditated Tuesday evening, a dog so depressed.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Well have you heard the stories so far have you
heard what I've said? Up these dogs? You know what
dogs love to do, look out the window and bark
at things. And there's not enough windows to look at
the bars.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Too many people.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And all the farts too. So here's what the newspaper said.
Tuesday evening. A dog entered William ayers.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
House e y r e ear Air Williams William Ayer's
house on Dominick Street through an open door. The animal
had consumed so much alcohol that it was quote foaming
at the mouth and apparently either rabid or suffering from
(35:18):
delirium tremens, which is like what alcoholics get. The dog
barked before you before hold on, let your honor hold on,
let me finish this. The dog barked at the owner
ran crazily through the house, knocking over furniture.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
And then the dog. The dog fled upstairs and jumped
out the top floor window and quote finished in its
existence on the road below. Such a poetics way.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I was just gonna say, the Irish are very poetic
in that way. Or did you hear about Mary down
the road? She finished her existence?
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Oh how did she finish it?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
She got drunk and jumped out a window oh, just.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Like me, mom. So, I mean, that's probably the saddest
thing that I read is that a dog got into it.
I didn't know dogs love whiskey, but.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Apparently, Yeah. I have a lot of questions about these
suicidal dogs.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah I don't. I don't really know.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I don't want to call this paper a liar, but
it sounds like fake news to me.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Oh boy, So the Dublin fire Brigade. So Dublin had
a fire.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Brigade at this time, four people in it.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Well, yeah, it was recently formed. This is pretty new,
and it was under the command of Captain James Robert Ingram.
And they arrived in fifteen minutes. That is not a
bad right because this.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Is all horse and carriage. So I hope they didn't
have the dogs leading the horses.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Now we got a bunch of drunk Dalmatians right now,
that's a Disney movie that I'd like to see. I
just want to point out drum Dalmatians and they all
just have broken funds. I really want to say, brand
new fired brigade, horse and buggy, small roads, don't really
(37:32):
know what you're doing. Fifteen minutes to show up. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
All then, what did they do when they showed up.
Were they just like, uh, we didn't get this training.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
We haven't gotten this far. We just get together.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Were like a two story house. That's the best we
can do. Sorry, I'm going to keep the horses from
drinking this because I don't want to pull this truck back.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Well, it's funny you say that, because they quickly realized
that their standard firefighting methods were useless because when you
spray hoses into water flaming whiskey, it just spreads the
flaming whisky.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
It just sends us box of flaming whisky.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, because alcohol floats in water. So it just they came.
They started shooting it with water, and that just caused
it to spread further down the street.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
They were looking for the fire extinguisher with like the
blue tag on it that you're supposed to use for
electrical fires. Nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I can't find it because it hasn't been invented yet.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
I guess the blue tag on it.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
So Captain Ingram and his men had to improvise. So
they first tried shoveling sand and earth onto and gravel onto.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
This was first, or was their first improvisation getting their
boots out. Yeah, we'll drink it down, buys.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
I don't think they did admit that. At first. We
tried to drink it all. Then then we tried to
put it out once we realized we couldn't.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Then Johnny went through somebody's house, knocked over fifteen people
right upstairs, and jumped out.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Just say he was a dog or something.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
He's been having the blues a bit lately.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah, he's been down because his not so attractive donkey
wife left him.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
She did not make the calendar.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
No she have you seen her. That's an ugly donkey.
I'm sorry, I don't say this a lot. That's an ugly, ugly.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Dog from from front and behind, especially especially.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah, I got cute kids, even though they don't live there.
One can only say kill me. So they shoveled sand
and earth and gravel onto it to under the flowing
risk Whiskey River, attempting to absorb the alcohol and smother
(39:58):
the flames. This worked, you know, in some spots, but
just the sheer volume of how much it was and
how narrow and congested the streets were, the progress was
really slow because it just kind of kept rolling down
the street.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, it's like trying to put your finger in a
dam of flaming whiskey.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Put your an alcoholic, So you keep taking your finger
out and licking it. I'll put my mouth over it.
I'll put my mouth over it.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
You're not.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
It is it's a whiskey enema is So next they
turned to more unusual materials, horse manure from nearby stables.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Well, come on, wasn't that part of the problem. Don't
be part of the problem. Be part of the solution. Manure.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
I can't hear throw all these matches on it. It's
it out.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
How about how about a whiskey?
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Here we go. I'm just I'm just trying to solve
a problem. All right, we're just doing a.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Scientific guys, coming up with any we're improvising.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
A dog is dead. A dog is dead, one.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Dog and one Johnny's dead.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
If this goes any further, I can get down to
the hot donkey's house.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Oh, I've got to protect the hat shamus.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
So uh they were so. The firemen were eventually figured
out and were able to make like makeshift damns, shoveling
manure and mud and whatever debris that they could in
front of.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
The somebody's been to Holland.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
I know what to do. It's fairly easy. Let me
put down my lollie and I'll help you. It's a
clip clap, clip clap, clip clap, clip clap. Those in
my Dutch shoes. Clip clap, clip clap. The dense fibrous
material soaked up the whiskey, breaking its flow and grating
(42:06):
barriers to stop it from reaching more buildings. Teams worked
in relays, digging into the street and tossing sand, soil,
manure other things.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
They had to recruit some more firefighters at this moment,
that is, they were just like, hey.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
You you're a fight.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Oh finally, I've always wanted to be a firefighter.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
This is this is this is the American dream for
these Irish who went over to Boston. Hey you you're
a firefighter. Now get in here.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yay, I'm six. Oh so this is funny you say that.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Wait those clogs and get.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
In here, kid, clip clopp Oh theylcome anata Dutch boy.
Oh hello, oh hello, we're best friends. Yes, let's never
leave each othersides. Uh, so they did. They had to
get more people to help them. Teams worked in relays
digging into the streets and tossing sand and soil and manures,
(43:05):
and people formed human chains to haul buckets and dirts
into the worst spot. It was filthy, exhausting, and hazardous work,
but it was finally contained and by the next morning
the fire was extinguished, not.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
With water eight o'clock at night into the morning, not dead,
not extinct, but with manure.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Manure, not water. Horseshit. There was more horse shit around.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Than is this hey, is this a sandy horseshit? It's
important to know.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
That don't use that. That horse only drinks whiskey.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Exclusion.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
So property damage across the tenements and the businesses was immense,
but there was also a loss of life. In total,
thirteen people died from this tragedy, but not a single
one of them from burns or smoke. Every single it
(44:15):
was one of those people.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
It was a slow burn.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
It was the alcohol poisoning from people sucking down street whiskey.
Thirteen people died. It was said that everyone was drinking it, everybody,
So I didn't point this out. There's people trying to
put it out, but the majority of people were not
(44:40):
trying to put it out. They were focused on drinking
the whiskey.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
You know, and I the Irons should been so stereotyped.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
I wonder why.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
I wonder, And then you hear a story like this
tough to defend.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
There, so out of the thirteen people, there was an
untold amount of number because they didn't they don't really
keep good accounts of this. But so much alcohol poisoning
so much, like I don't understand. So I understand. It's like,
oh my god, I'm poor. I love whiskey. Here it is.
There's a bunch of free whiskey. You don't have to
(45:25):
drink it immediately.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Don't have to save it in the boot, say, put
it in in the.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Christmas cupboard, anything, get a jar, like, start hoarding the whiskey.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
I can only assume that they thought that this was
this was the end of times, this was a biblical plague. Yeah,
maybe whiskey coming through the streets.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Yeah, okay. Maybe in their defense, everybody thought that they
were gonna die, you know, like there was just fire
all around them, and they're like, well, might as well
get super drunk.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Something else to do. I guess I'll never marry the
hot donkey.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, and you know what, that was my dream Shamus.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
The donkeys Shamus can't live forever.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I mean, and so, to be fair, I bet you
that thought didn't even cross our mind because obviously they
probably could only pay for so much whiskey, and they
just drank as much whiskey as they could pay for
and then they were done.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
So to have like, yeah, you're working for like the
big wig companies, and all of a sudden you get
the stuff for free, you might as might as well indulge.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, and it just comes at you. I mean, yeah,
you're living a shitty life.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
What damn the man?
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, damn the man. That's what kind of was I did?
I got? I got fine. I only was able to
find information on one person who died because this is
this is another time too, where like if you died
from something like this, it was shameful for your family,
So like names weren't.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Giving out, and also the people running the newspapers couldn't
care less. It was just another low status worker.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Yeah. So the one person I found. His name was
William Smith, which sounds like a fake name. He was
twenty one years old.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
It feels like a very English name.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yes he was, he was twenty one.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Then Liam o'ness, yes, William Smith.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Uh. He scooped it up with his cupped hands and
was drinking it until he fell unconscious. He was carried
to the hospital. He was treated. He briefly regained consciousness
the day. Yes, Hi got call my ex girlfriend real quick,
I gots I go. It's growing a voicemail again. I
(47:56):
think she blocked my number.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Pickup Angela Agile lot Aga.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
I drank so much Street with the Angel life Change.
I don't want to fuck donkeys anymore.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I want to except that one was in the eighteen
sixty three Miss Liberties.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
But she's my path. You said she's my past.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
I can have a pass other time, my celebrity past.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah, we all do, just because you walked in. I'll
be drinking off to that calendar. Who I got a
lot more to say, but I think I might be dying.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yep. Just hold the pillow over his face, nurse, We'll
just say he died whiskey drinking.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
As the disaster came into focus, the Lord Mayor. I
love this Lord Mayor Peter Paul McSweeney. Mm hmmm, yeah,
that's a Irish right.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
But you see the one who became the pope.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
I think so. I think that's the Irish Pope. Peter
Paul McSweeney commented that it was quote wonderful that Moore
hadn't died.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
He thought, his blessings. It's a very pessimistic Irish cling
to do.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Could have been worse, could have been worse, could have
been you know, could have been fourteen people that died.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Could have been six thousand casks of whiskey gone.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
Yeah, and what do we do then? Huh what about
happy hour? If that' would have happened?
Speaker 2 (49:29):
She just imagine.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah, So he said, yeah, there was wonderful more people
and died. He thought that the overdoses were sadly inevitable
in a city that had a tendency towards immoderate drinking.
So he just basically said like, hey, yeah, we're a
bunch of we have a drinking problem in the Liberties here.
(49:52):
And I'm kind of surprised that more people didn't die.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
I mean, it was it was bound to happen.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah, I mean, considering considering everything that I kind of
set this up for, were you kind of maybe expecting
more deaths.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Yes, especially like in a warehouse and fire, but the
timing being in the evening when there there weren't many
people loading casks in and out, and lots of you know,
kids playing in the street exactly.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, then catching fire and then running into people's house,
knocking over the fronture and then jumping out of I
think that because it happened later at night, that that's
exactly why, like it.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Was, Yeah, just count your blessings. I also wonder like,
because like these were being stored there were they not ready?
Were they not fully like distilled and ready for consumption?
Speaker 1 (50:48):
They were? They were, they were, so it was all distilled.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
It was just it was drinkable whiskey, and it was
so much that they died immediately.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yes, The Great Dublin Whisky Fire of eighteen seventy five
lives on as one of the oddest disasters in Irish history.
A night when a river of burning whiskey ran through
a crowded neighborhood, when firemen fought ablaze with horse manure,
and people died not from flames but from their own
(51:20):
thirst and farts and farts. I'm going to put the
sources in the show description if you want to check
those out, if you want to double check my thing.
I wouldn't do you know a report based on what
you heard on this? I would do some of my
(51:40):
own research.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
And also, it's been bothering me since I said it
the Great Famine or the Great Hunger here was eighteen
forty five to eighteen fifty two, so before this, before this.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
So everyone, Oh, maybe that's why because people generations had
lived with so little, maybe you know, and then by
the time you get this, you have So I think
that's honestly what it is. It's you have so little.
Oh my god, now I have everything, and they just
over indulge.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
It has to be. It has to be. It's like that,
just like war hoarding tendency, or like.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
When you know, when you uh, you've heard the stories
about people who haven't eaten for like days or weeks
and then they yeah, and then they eat and then
they die.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
Yep, well, right, could have been worse, could.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Have So there you go. There's the Great Dublin Fire.
It happened on your street that you lived on.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
It literally did. And I'm assuming that this warehouse space
is where the Tealings distillery is now, or you know,
after it burned down. The developers who built my condo unit,
we're like Hey, I know do with this.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
We'll just we'll just build it on top of all
this soaked straw.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
You know there's whiskey manure.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Yeah, so yeah, what do you how do you? How
do you feel? How do you feel about after hearing
that story?
Speaker 2 (53:06):
But I feel bad for living in that neighborhood and
not knowing the details of this story. But again, it
was a it was a neighborhood that has seen a
lot of tragedy through the years. And yeah, it's it's
it's very interesting and I think again it is definitely
(53:27):
like knowing the political and economic history of that area
and time does not surprise me because it was a
very poor working class. But it just seems that so
obvious safety concerns were just I just know nobody thought
(53:50):
of this thought. We we know that alcohol is flammable,
wood is flammable. Rats are flab flammable.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Trust me, I've tried. I've burned so many rats. Flammable.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Horse farts are also flammable. Let's shove them all into
this tiny area with stoves.
Speaker 1 (54:16):
Yeah, and let's you know what, everybody live right next
to it, like build houses right.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Next to it, right on top of it.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
On top of it even. Yeah, I mean the first
time I heard it, I was like, haha, that's funny.
These people drank themselves to death ha ha ha. But
you know, once you start to learn about the story,
you understand it's very understandable how this could happen and
how people behaved that way.
Speaker 2 (54:41):
Like, I mean, maybe like everyone I went to college
with who got alcohol poisoning and had to get their
stomachs pumped in the hospital, like they weren't drinking flaming whiskey. Yeah,
so maybe it is possible to consume so much in
so little time that you do. Just I mean, it's
(55:02):
not like they were going and getting their stomachs pumped.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
Well yeah, well you gotta yeah, you gotta think a
whole boot of whiskey is a lot of whiskey. That's see.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Willy big feet.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Spoom plump plump plump. Hey. You know I don't like
that nickname.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
Stop at Willy big feet. You know what we mean
when we say it and my.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
Dick is big what gross?
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Ah?
Speaker 3 (55:32):
Everyone knows I got a tiny dick a big feet.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Ah. Yeah, I think it's a It's sad. The whole story. Uh,
mistakes were definitely made by the storage of it. I
think hopefully maybe they learned something from that tragedy and
there was some better storage. I don't know. It's a
human life wasn't valued the same as it was.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Neither was dog life especially.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
I mean if you were a human it was hard enough,
let alone being an animal. You know, like nobody that
guy could have just been like, oh, now's my time
to kill this dog. You know, he could have been
a bad person or something.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
Also, the Dublin Fire Brigrade is still just down the
road from that area in Dolphin's Barn.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
Oh and shout out to them. You have a history
of act being on time, and you know so many
of these stories. It's like and then the fire department
showed up and they got in a fight with another
fire department about who gets to put it out?
Speaker 2 (56:36):
You know, like yeah, famous firefighter barrals they happened.
Speaker 1 (56:43):
Yeah, if you didn't like that, could be maybe one
of them. I mean, maybe I'll look at the jurisdiction.
It is because you got paid by the people that
after you put out the fire. So if some other
fire fighters showed up and then put out the fire,
they would get the money, so they'd start fighting each
other as the building was burning down.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
No, lie, and that is still a thing here. The
fire department has to come out to your house. You
have to pay them. It's not a like a freeze.
Speaker 1 (57:10):
One thing that's worse about Ireland than America. One thing
we get free firefighters.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
I could be horribly mistaken, but I'm sware my husband
did say that because it was wild to me.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
Wow. Well, I just my house burned down and I
lost all my belongings and I have no money. Oh
and here's a bill from the fire department.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
Wow. All right, Well, suck on that, Ireland. We got
one thing on you, all right. I mean I don't
know how good your post offices are pretty.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Good, but I mean our post office is also like
a bank.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
It's like a Walgreens tourist office.
Speaker 2 (57:49):
It's you could do anything there.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
All right.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Well, got prescriptions.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
That's it, you know. Maybe I'll look in your neighborhood
see if there's you know, some more stories, or if
you have something that you want to talk about, we
can come on and do another Mistakes remain. Please leave
us a review on whatever podcasting platform you listen to.
Speaker 2 (58:08):
If you still and remember that I'm Mike Kaufman, and.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
I'm Mike Kaufman, and we're all Mike Kaufman's and that's
all I gotta say. Uh, stay subscribed. Maybe in like
a little bit will be another Mistakes were made. Thanks
for coming on the show, Jenna, You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (58:28):
I'm Mike Coffman. Sorry you almost tricked me there
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