Death by Beer: The London Beer Flood of 1814

Patrick Lynch - November 2, 2017

Imagine seeing a 15-foot high wave of beer coming right at you. Such a scenario is typically reserved for fiction, but it was a reality for the citizens of St. Giles, London, on October 17, 1814. You might expect thousands of people to help themselves to the free booze on display but in reality, several people drowned in it. The London Beer Flood was a unique event that claimed the lives of at least eight people and here’s how it happened.

Background

To understand how the London Beer Flood happened in the first place, you need to rewind to half a century before the fiasco. By the second half of the eighteenth century, there was almost a competition amongst London breweries to see who had the largest porter vat. According to Ian S. Hornsey in A History of Beer and Brewing, the brewer with the largest vat received fulsome praise, and the gigantic vats were a remarkable sight.

By 1763, there were vats capable of holding over 1,500 barrels, and by the time of the beer flood, the vats were exponentially larger. For the record, the vat that burst and caused the fiasco could hold approximately 3,550 barrels of beer (the total weight was over 571 tons), but it was a LONG way from being the largest vat in the Meux and Co. Brewery (also known as the Horse Shoe Brewery) where the disaster unfolded.

A contemporary writer, Mrs. Mary Brunton, visited the brewery in 1812 and outlined the enormous size of the vats. The largest cask she saw cost £10,000 at the time and was 70 feet in diameter. It could hold up to 18,000 barrels of beer (£40,000 worth of porter), and the iron hoops around the cask weighed 80 tons by themselves. Brunton also stated that there was a vat that could hold 16,000 barrels. In other words, the London Beer Flood could have been even worse.

Although Meux & Co. claimed the brewery was founded in 1764, there are reports of other brewers in the location before this date. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the brewery was almost in the top 10 in London. The Great Beer Flood was not the first tragedy to happen at the brewery either. In 1794, John Stevenson Junior, the owner of the brewery at the time, fell into a cooler and drowned.

After all sorts of legal wrangling, Henry Meux, and several partners, acquired the Horse Shoe Brewery and its production quickly escalated. From 1809 to 1811, the brewery’s annual production more than doubled from 40,000 barrels to over 103,000. At this point, the Horse Shoe Brewery was #6 in London and Meux merged with a smaller brewery in 1813. The future seemed bright, but then, the brewery was rocked by tragedy.

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The London Beer Flood Begins

At around 4:30 pm on Monday, October 17, 1814, one of the 22 iron loops securing a 22-foot high vat in one of the brewery’s rear storehouses fell off. It was located around three feet from the ground, and the vat itself was almost full with approximately 3,555 gallons of ‘entire’ porter. At the inquest, later on, the storehouse’s clerk, George Crick, admitted that no one was worried about the hoop falling off because it happened 2-3 times a year.

Crick wrote a note to one of the brewery partners informing him that the hoop had fallen off, but otherwise, no one paid much attention to the matter. About an hour later, Crick heard the vat burst, and when he reached the storehouse, he was stunned to find that the beer had smashed through a 22-inch thick wall. Even worse, its force, along with that of the flying debris, knocked the cock out of a 2,100 barrel vat which resulted in the equivalent of over 1,200 barrels of beer escaping. It was utter chaos as Crick, and his staff tried to prevent others from drowning. They were up to their waists in beer and had no idea what was going on outside.

The Beer Tsunami

In the end, around 323,000 gallons of beer burst out into the streets of London and caused havoc. The brewery was located amongst the tenements of St Giles Rookery which housed some of the poorest people in the city. It was common for entire families to live in a single room. Although it was ultimately a terrible tragedy, it could have been even worse. As it was still early in the evening, most of the houses were comparatively empty. Had the accident occurred an hour or two later, the death toll would have been in the dozens at least.

One can only imagine the scene as a 15-foot high wave of dark liquid plowed through the streets. It flooded cellars, went through the backs of houses and forced people out of first-floor rooms. One of the victims was four-year-old Hannah Banfield. She was having tea with her mother, Mary, when the beer flooded through the room, tossed Hannah through a partition and killed her instantly. Mary and another one of her daughters barely survived.

14-Year-Old Eleanor Cooper was another victim. She was caught up in the wave when outside scouring for pots. The tragic teenager was found upright amongst the ruins three hours later. The most heart-wrenching part of the tale unquestionably surrounds the wake of two-year-old John Saville. His family was in the cellar grieving his death (he had died the previous day) when the beer wave crashed in and killed five people, including John’s mother, Ann.

A three-year-old girl named Sarah Bates was the last known victim. There is only one eyewitness account of the disaster. It came from an unnamed American who happened to be in the area at the time. He wrote about the tragedy 20 years later in a New York magazine called The Knickerbocker. He said that “whole dwellings were literally riddled with the flood.” The survivor wrote about his good fortune to survive as his “clothes were heavy with the hot malt liquor which had saturated them (the victims).” While there is no doubt that this stranger than fiction tale really happened, a few myths are surrounding the London Beer Flood that is worth tackling.

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Exploding Some Myths

One myth suggests that when survivors were taken to Middlesex Hospital, the existing patient were furious at the doctors and nurses for not serving them the beer they were clearly giving to newcomers. Another myth suggests that several people died when a group gathered to witness the bodies of flood victims. They apparently caused the floor to collapse, and several people were crushed.

The biggest myth surrounding the London Beer Flood is the idea that people in the neighborhood, which consisted mainly of ‘lower class’ Irish, began scooping up beer on the streets. The Bury and Norfolk Post is the culprit for this myth. It is the only publication that ran with the story, and it only appeared nine days after the disaster. When you consider the contempt in which Irish people were held by London newspapers, there is simply no way those publications would pass up a chance to lash out at the perceived enemy.

Aftermath

Initially, the death toll was said to be as high as 30 people, but the coroner’s report showed the actual number of deaths in the flood was eight. There are unconfirmed reports that one person who allegedly helped himself to the beer died from alcohol poisoning days later. A pub called the Ship exhibited the bodies of some of the victims in a bid to collect money for the relatives of the deceased. They managed to collect a little over £33, small change compared to the losses the victims sustained.

As for the brewery, Meux and Co. gave a supposedly ‘low’ estimate of £23,000 worth of losses, an absolute fortune at the time (over £1.25 million today). The company asked Parliament for a refund of the duty it paid on the lost beer and received a waiver in return. The brewery did not have to pay the Crown taxes already paid on the lost beer, an act that saved the company more than £7,250.

Although legal action was taken against the brewery, the judge and jury ruled the incident as an ‘unavoidable Act of God.’ In other words, no one was held responsible. While the brewery was able to carry on in business as usual fashion, the already poor families, who lost everything in the flood, received no official compensation and a relative pittance in collection money.

The Horse Shoe Brewery continued trading even as the stench of beer surrounded the area for months. It remained in operation until 1921 when it finally closed; it was demolished the following year, and the Dominion Theatre was erected on the site a few years later. Although the tragedy is all but forgotten now, there is a local pub, called The Holborn Whippet, which brews a special ale each year on the anniversary of the London Beer Flood.

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