Life in the city can be dangerous, but one way you don’t expect to perish on the streets of London is by drowning, and least of all in beer. Yes, yes, <insert stag do jokes here>, but this horrifying nightmare became reality on Monday October 17, 1814, when the city was literally flooded with beer.
The disaster began at the Horse Shoe Brewery along Tottenham Court Road, one of the city’s most famous spots in the modern era that was densely populated in the 19th century. It was home to a great towering vat of brown porter ale, a dark beer that’s reportedly a chocolate-caramel profile on the tongue, but decidedly less favorable on the lungs.
According to Historic UK, the tower was 6.7 meters (22 feet) high and contained around 3,500 barrels of the beer, but this all changed on October 17, 1814, when one of the crucial iron rings holding it together snapped. The rupture saw over 320,000 gallons of beer flood into the streets in a 4.6-meter (15-foot) wave that ripped through the area.
Houses collapsed and places of work were flooded, including the Tavistock Arms Pub where a barmaid was killed. In total, eight people are said to have died from the immediate aftermath of the beer flood, but a ninth reportedly died days later from alcohol poisoning.
When faced with streets paved with beer, hundreds began scooping and guzzling to rescue what was left, in a spirit of spillage is lickage that would make any uni student proud. Even once the beer was gone it couldn’t be forgotten, as the smell of such a dark beer lingered on for months after the accident.
Despite the very earthly origins of the beer tsunami, the accident was ruled an “Act Of God” when the brewery was later taken to court. They were therefore free of blame in the eyes of the law, but it still cost them the modern equivalent of £1.25 million in damage, which at the time was a measly £23,000. Don’t you just love inflation?
In the wake of the disaster, some of the survivors put their deceased loved ones on display to try and raise funds – an activity that proved so popular one exhibition was plunged into a beer-filled basement after the floor collapsed from so much footfall. It might seem strange in modern-day society, but such morbid exhibits used to be all the rage. In Paris, crowds would gather to see famous faces like “woman cut into two pieces” at Le Musée de la Mort, where bodies went on display just behind the Notre-Dame Cathedral.
Everything is content, I guess.
