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Georgian London (1714 to 1830) was a city coming of age—emerging as a world leader in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. The growth of industry and population was explosive, but with it came extreme poverty, growing numbers of poor immigrants, and sanitation problems that bred disease and epidemics—the time of Charles Dickens’ novels.
 The Boom of Porter Sales
In the bustling metropolis, transportation workers (porters) carried luggage as the new rail service carried an ebb and flow of travelers. A thirsty lot, the porters were chiefly responsible for the increasing popularity of the aptly named porter beers. Introduced in the early 1700s, porter brews were dark brown or black, cloudy, and robust—a predecessor of stout ales. Because several months to a year was needed to mature porter, it was aged in huge, wooden casks. The casks typically held a half-million gallons but they were getting bigger all the time to keep up with demand! 1
 Bigger is Better: Brew-house Competition
In 1760, Sam Whitbread added to his Chiswell Street brewery a Porter Tun room—the unsupported roof span of which was “exceeded in its majestic size only by that of Westminster Hall”—and which room held a giant beer vat. Some years after that, Henry Thrale’s new porter vat reportedly was celebrated by 100 people enjoying a sit-down dinner inside it. Not to be beaten, in 1790, Richard Meux (Griffin Brewery) invested ₤5,000 in a vat that held 10,000 barrels of porter; it was 23 feet high and 60 feet in diameter, and was celebrated by 200 guests dining inside. Meux’s son, Henry, topped his father and Whitbread in 1795 when, for his Horse Shoe Brewery, he invested some ₤10,000 (today about ₤795,000; US$1,556,240)2,3 on a vat that was twice the size of Whitbread’s. It held 20,000 barrels: 25 feet high and 195 feet in circumference. However, we discovered no reports of a dinner party inside that vat. Soon after installing the 20,000-barrel vat, Henry added another vat that was almost as large.4,5
Loss of Containment Accident: The Tide Turns into Tsunami
After 20 years of service, with limited inspections to verify integrity, Meux’s cavernous cask failed and wreaked devastation across the poor, slum neighborhood of St. Giles, where his brewery was housed on Tottenham Court Road at Oxford Street. (Today the Dominion Theatre stands at that location.)  October 17, 1814, a seven-hundredweight (approximately 784-pound) iron hoop fell off; it had secured a 22-foot tall vat, about three feet from the bottom. However, the storehouse clerk was “not alarmed” and stated at the inquest after the incident that this happened often—two or three times a year—without serious consequences.6
Serious consequences, indeed, befell this London neighborhood as a beer tsunami crashed out of the brewery through brick walls, down streets, and into homes and cellars, carrying in its wake property and people. The force of the initial bursting vat and its tumultuous river of beer caused other, smaller vats to collapse. The reported totals vary but, by all accounts, well over 1,000,000 liters of porter flooded the neighborhood.
An anonymous American author survived and wrote briefly of the experience in an 1835 essay for The Knickerbocker:
…all at once, I found myself borne onward with great velocity by a torrent, which burst upon me so suddenly as almost to deprive me of breath. A roar, as of falling buildings at a distance, and suffocating fumes, were in my ears and nostrils. I was rescued with great difficulty, by the people who immediately collected around me, and from whom I learned the nature of the disaster which had befallen me. An immense vat, belonging to a brew-house situated in Banbury street Saint Giles, and containing four or five thousand barrels of strong beer, had suddenly burst, and swept every thing before it. Whole dwellings were literally riddled by the flood,—numbers were killed,—and from among the crowds which filled the narrow passages in every direction, came the groans of sufferers. 7
Aftermath
At least two homes were demolished by the wave of beer. The coroner’s inquest listed eight killed in the flood, most from drowning—three children, a teenaged female barmaid, three women between 27 and 35 years old, and one elderly woman. Five of those drowned in a suddenly flooded basement where they had gathered for  the wake of a young child who had died the day before. Many others were severely injured and hospitalized. Some legends report that nine died, including one man who succumbed to alcohol poisoning after trying to drink as much of the beer as he could so it wouldn’t go to waste.
Four days later, the number of spectators in the neighborhood was “beyond calculation” (Morning Post).6 Legends persist that some families tried to profit by opening their homes to the curious for a fee and that a home where bodies were laid out for identification became so overcrowded that the floor collapsed, dropping the spectators into a basement full of beer.
An estimate of the victims lost belongings was ₤3,000 (today about ₤166,000; US$324,952) and a relief fund raised more than ₤800 (today about ₤44,300; US$86,719). The Meux brewery estimated a loss of at least ₤23,000 (today about ₤1,270,000; US$2,486,080).6 The company petitioned Parliament for and was granted a duty-free credit for the next year equivalent to the amount of duty that had been paid on the lost beer.
Lessons Applicable for Today
· Conduct appropriate safety studies to understand the impact of location, layout, and design measures to eliminate, reduce, or mitigate risk measures to ensure safety of the workplace and community in the event of a hazardous event
· Create and follow procedures for regular inspection and maintenance
· Instill a safety culture so “common” occurrences, such as a broken retaining band, are repaired, not ignored
· Call to muster in a safe place whenever a hazardous event is suspected or evident
· Collaborate with emergency personnel for appropriate emergency response and crowd control
References
1. Bros, Alstrom (December 13, 2000). What The Hell Is A Porter? Online at http://beeradvocate.com/articles/305 , accessed December 28, 2010.
2. Measuring Worth. Online at http://www.measuringworth.com/ppowerUK Accessed January 13, 2011.
3. OANDA. Online at http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter Accessed January 13, 2011.
4. Brown, Pete (February 3, 2010). Porter explodes—no, really. Australian Brews News. Online at http://www.brewsnews.com.au/2010/02/porter-explodes-no-really/ , accessed December 28, 2010.
5. Hornsey, Ian Spencer. The Start of Large-scale Brewing. In: A History of Beer and Brewing. Great Britain: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2003, pp 450–451.
6. Cornell, Martyn (October 17, 2010). So what REALLY happened on October 17 1814? Martyn Cornell’s Zythophile – beer now and then – Online at http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/so-what-really-happened-on-october-17-1814/ , accessed December 28, 2010.
7. Anonymous (August 1835). My Tablets: Or, records and sketches from the journal of a student and traveler. The Knickerbocker. New-York Monthly Magazine, Vol.VI.
Photos
1. Glass of porter from stockphoto.com
2. Giant beer barrel "013-giant-beer-barrel-q50-1705x2020". Several sites on the Internet. Copyright indeterminable.
3. Map of Dickens' London. Jane Austin Today (blog). Online at http://janitesonthejames.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html Accessed January 13, 2011.
4. Horseshoe Brewery in 1896. Several sites on the Internet. Copyright undeterminable.
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