The Great Beer Flood
How a 15-foot wave of beer killed 8 people in the heart of London
The words “beer flood” sound pretty funny, and to some, it might also seem like a fun type of flood, but this event was anything but fun. An incredibly bizarre and striking disaster, in the heart of London, claimed the lives of eight people.
The Horse Shoe Brewery was a major producer of beer, more specifically Porter, constructed in 1764, it was located in the City of Westminster. By 1811, it had become the 6th largest producer of porter in London, producing a whopping 103,000 barrels a year. After half a century of production, the owner, Lord Meux, and his peers perfected the beer production process, but nothing could have prepared the people of London for what was going to happen on a cold October afternoon in 1814.
17th October
During a routine check, the storehouse clerk named George Crick noticed that one of the iron bands of the beer vats had slipped, the band weighing around 320kg (700 pounds). Due to this being a common occurrence, Crick told his supervisor, although neither of them was particularly concerned. The supervisor then said “no harm would ensue,” but still told Crick to write a letter to Mr Young (one of the partners of the brewery), so that it could later be fixed.
This vat was roughly 6.7 metres tall (22 feet), weighed around 33 tons, and contained roughly 3,555 imperial barrels worth of porter (581,808 litres). Each imperial barrel held 36 gallons.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, this huge vat full of porter burst and let the enormous amount of porter flow into the factory. This led to other smaller barrels bursting and their liquid adding together with the rest. It is now estimated that the total amount of liquid was equal to 128,000 to 323,000 imperial gallons (580,000–1,470,000 litres or 154,000–388,000 US gallons).
Disaster has struck
This huge amount of liquid smashed the two brick thick wall of the factory and started pouring out on the nearby street, creating a wave 4.6 metres (15 feet) high that went on to destroy two houses and badly damaging two more.
In the first destroyed house, there was a young, four-year-old girl named Hannah Bamfield who was having tea with her mother and another child. The 4.6-metre high wave knocked Hannah and the others out, killing her in the process. In the second destroyed house, there was a wake being held by an Irish family. Both the mother of the deceased and four others were killed by the wave. Furthermore, a 14-year-old girl, who was washing pots outside a pub called Tavistock Arms, which was under the brewery, died from being crushed by the bricks which had been previously broken by the wave. Finally, the last person to be found dead was another child, Sarah Bates, who was found dead in her own home.
Since the land around the brewery was flat and low-lying, combined with the fact that the location lacked good drainage, a lot of the beer flowed into cellars, which back then were inhabited, so people had to climb on furniture to survive.
Luckily, none of the workers of the brewery died, but three of them were brought to the hospital due to their injuries, and they all survived.
The Morning Post described the scene afterwards as:
“a scene of desolation that presents a most awful and terrific appearance, equal to that which fire or earthquake may be supposed to occasion”.
Hundreds of people were gathered around the brewery, staring at the disaster that had just happened. The bodies of the victims were laid out in the yard nearby by the families so that they could raise money for funerals.
Outcomes of the disaster
Although a coroner’s inquest was held, nothing came of it, with the coroner reaching a verdict of “An Act of God” (natural hazard outside of human control). This was followed by an official police inquiry and a trial, but it was dismissed with the jury saying this was caused “casually, accidentally, and by misfortune” which meant that the company of the brewery did not have to pay compensation, although it had cost them £23,000 worth of damages, equal to £1,845,345 today (2,038,566 euro or $2,477,550).
The company, Meux & Co, soon thereafter received a loan after a petition to Parliament, saving them from bankruptcy, and it went on to trade until 1961, when it was liquidated.
This accident marked the phasing out of wooden vats in the brewing industry, jumpstarting the use of concrete-lined vats for extra security.
Today, we shall remember the names of those who died due to this tragedy:
- Eleanor Cooper — 14 years old
- Mary Mulvey — 30 years old
- Tomas Murry — 3 years old
- Hannah Bamfield — 4 years old
- Sarah Bates — 3 years old
- Ann Saville — 60 years old
- Elizabeth Smith — 27 years old
- Catherine Butler — 65 years old
A minute of silence for the victims of unsafe capitalist practices, practices made to maximise profits and minimise costs, but which incurred the greatest cost of them all, human life.
Historically, this is not the first nor the last food-flood, and I will be making a series of articles on these bizarre events.
References
As It Happens, 2014. [Radio programme] CBC Radio: CBC.
“Dreadful Accident”. Morning Post. 19 October 1814. p. 3
“Dreadful Accident at H. Meux & Co’s Brewhouse”. Caledonian Mercury. 24 October 1814. p. 2
Johnson, B., 2016. The London Beer Flood Of 1814. [online] Historic UK. Available at: <https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-London-Beer-Flood-of-1814/> [Accessed 15 December 2020].
Klein, C., 2014. The London Beer Flood. [online] HISTORY. Available at: <https://www.history.com/news/london-beer-flood> [Accessed 16 December 2020].
Tingle, R., 2014. What Really Happened In The London Beer Flood 200 Years Ago?. [online] The Independent. Available at: <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/what-really-happened-london-beer-flood-200-years-ago-9796096.html> [Accessed 16 December 2020].
