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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey y'all, I'm Eves. Welcome to This Day

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Speaker 1: in History Class, a show where we one day ship

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Speaker 1: nuggets of history straight to your brain through your ear hole.

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Speaker 1: Today is October. The day was October eighteen fourteen. A

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Speaker 1: huge vat of porter at the Horseshoe Brewery in London burst,

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Speaker 1: sending a wave of beer into the surrounding streets. Eight

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Speaker 1: people died in the accident. The Horseshoe Brewery was in St.

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Speaker 1: Giles Rookery, a poor area that's that could hold thousands

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Speaker 1: of barrels of beer were a major attraction for London

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Speaker 1: breweries at the time. The Horseshoe was no exception. The

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Speaker 1: brewery had a massive twenty two ft wooden fermentation bat,

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Speaker 1: among other enormous bats. The vat was held together with

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Speaker 1: heavy iron rings. On the afternoon of October sevente clerk

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Speaker 1: George Crick noticed that a ring had come off a

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Speaker 1: cask that stored a batch of porter, But Krick and

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Speaker 1: his boss were not that concerned about the broken ring,

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Speaker 1: since that issue happened at least a couple of times

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Speaker 1: per year. Crick's boss told him to write a letter

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Speaker 1: to a brewery partner to have the problem fixed later.

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Speaker 1: But just a couple of hours after Crick discovered the

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Speaker 1: snapped ring, the vat burst. The explosion of the first

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Speaker 1: vat caused other vats in the brewery to burst as well.

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Speaker 1: The back wall of the brewery collapsed and at least

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Speaker 1: a hundred thousand gallons of beer blasted out of the building.

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Speaker 1: Everyone inside the brewery survived, though some had to be

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Speaker 1: rescued from the flood and rubble. But eight women and

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Speaker 1: children died in the London beer flood. As it became known,

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Speaker 1: Mary Vanfield and her daughter Hannah died in their house

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Speaker 1: on New Street as they sat down for tea. Five

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Speaker 1: people died in the Sellar apartment as they mourned the

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Speaker 1: death of a child. Eleanor Cooper, was killed as the

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Speaker 1: building's brickfall collapsed. There were stories of people drinking the

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Speaker 1: beer and even getting alcohol poisoning, but those were likely

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Speaker 1: just rumors. Days later, a jury investigated the flood. In

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Speaker 1: the end, the flood was deemed an act of God

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Speaker 1: and the deaths caused were ruled an unfortunate accident. The

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Speaker 1: brewery did not have to pay damages to any of

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Speaker 1: the victims, and it was able to reclaim the excise

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Speaker 1: taxes it paid on the beer it lost. The brewery

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Speaker 1: opened back up soon after the accident and didn't shut

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Speaker 1: down until more than a century later. I'm each Deathcote

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Speaker 1: and hopefully you know a little more about history today

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Speaker 1: than you did yesterday. If there's something I missed in

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Speaker 1: the show today, you can let us know at p

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Speaker 1: D i HC podcast on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Email

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Speaker 1: still works, send us a note at this day at

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Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com. Thank you for listening to today's episode.

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Speaker 1: We'll see you again tomorrow with another one mm HM.

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