☞Flash Flood!

☞Flash Flood!

☞Today in History -- On today’s date 208 years ago, Tuesday, October 17, 1814, in a curiously-interesting case of sad misfortune, the infamous Great London Beer Flood occurred in the Parish of Saint Giles at London, England.

☞It was at the Messrs. Henry Meux & Company’s Horse Shoe Brewery on that fateful day that one of the brewery’s massive wooden vats filled with over 135,000 Imperial gallons of beer was ominously bulging at the seams. The Brobdingnagian barrel stood 20 feet tall & was held together by twenty-nine 700-pound wrought-iron bands. 

Suddenly, at precisely 6:00 PM, the vat ruptured, causing adjacent vats to succumb in a domino effect. As a result, more than 323,000 Imperial gallons of beer smashed through the brewery’s 25-foot-tall brick walls & gushed into the streets of London. The resulting wave of beer destroyed two homes & drowned eight people.

☞The torrent smashed two houses & the nearby Tavistock Arms pub on Great Russell Street, where a 14-year-old barmaid named Eleanor Cooper was buried under the rubble. Mary Mulvey & her 3-year-old son Thomas were drowned, whilst Hannah Banfield & Sarah Bates, ages four & three, were swept away in the flood.  Both died of their injuries.  

☞According to the next day’s London’s Morning Post, “The surrounding scene of desolation presents a most awful & terrific appearance, equal to that which fire or earthquake may be supposed to occasion.” The Morning Post also reported that it was “one of the most melancholy accidents we ever remember.”

☞Just two days after the catastrophe, a jury convened to investigate the accident. After visiting the site of the tragedy, viewing the bodies of the victims, & hearing testimony from witnesses, the jury rendered a verdict that the incident had been "an Act of God” & that the victims had met their deaths “casually, accidentally, & by misfortune,” leaving no one responsible.

☞It was reported that one man died several days after the flood from the lingering effects of alcohol poisoning -- purportedly after he had heroically attempted to stem the tide by drinking as much of the beer as humanly possible.

☞Meux & Co. survived, although their financial loss was made worse by the fact that they had already paid tax on the beer. The company successfully applied to Parliament for a refund & continued to brew beer on the same site.

☞The left-hand photograph depicts an 1814 illustration of one of the gigantic wooden beer vats at the Horseshoe Brewery in London. The right-hand photograph depicts an 1814 etching of the scene of the catastrophic Great London Beer Flood.