The Day a Wave of Beer Killed 8 People in London

On 17 October 1814, a giant vat at the Horse Shoe Brewery in London burst. A wave of dark porter beer, around 15 feet high, smashed through the brewery wall and into the slum of St Giles. Eight people died – all of them women and children. An hour before the disaster, a clerk had noticed that an iron hoop had slipped off the vat. So why did nobody evacuate? Was there really a drunken free-for-all in the streets afterwards? And why did the brewery get its money back while the families got nothing? The true story behind one of history's strangest disasters. CHAPTERS 0:00 A wave of beer 0:41 London and porter 1:35 The monster vat 2:14 St Giles 2:46 The warning 3:32 The burst 4:14 Behind the wall were homes 5:28 Silence after the flood 6:00 The legend 6:44 Nobody to blame 7:33 Why was beer so deadly? 8:19 What remains In memory of Eleanor Cooper (14), Hannah Bamfield (4), Sarah Bates (3), Ann Saville (60), Mary Mulvey (30), Thomas Murry (3), Elizabeth Smith (27) and Catherine Butler (65). Sources: the 1814 coroner's inquest as reported in contemporary newspapers; beer historian Martyn Cornell (zythophile.co.uk); Wikipedia, "London Beer Flood". #history #london #beerflood #strangehistory #animation