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The London Beer Flood was an accident at Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery, London, on 17 October 1814.

It took place when one of the 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vats of fermenting porter burst. The escaping liquid dislodged the valve of another vessel and destroyed several large barrels: between 128,000 and 323,000 imperial gallons (580,000–1,470,000 L; 154,000–388,000 US gal) of beer were released in total. The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into an area of slum dwellings known as the St Giles rookery. Eight people were killed, five of them mourners at the wake being held by an Irish family for a two-year-old boy. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that the eight had lost their lives "casually, accidentally and by misfortune". The brewery was nearly bankrupted by the event; it avoided collapse after a rebate from HM Excise on the lost beer. The brewing industry gradually stopped using large wooden vats after the accident. The brewery moved in 1921, and the Dominion Theatre is now where the brewery used to stand. Meux & Co went into liquidation in 1961.

In the early nineteenth century the Meux Brewery was one of the two largest in London, along with Whitbread. In 1809 Sir Henry Meux purchased the Horse Shoe Brewery, at the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. Meux's father, Sir Richard Meux, had previously co-owned the Griffin Brewery in Liquor-Pond Street (now Clerkenwell Road), in which he had constructed the largest vat in London, capable of holding 20,000 imperial barrels. Henry Meux emulated his father's large vat, and constructed a wooden vessel 22 feet (6.7 m) tall and capable of holding 18,000 imperial barrels. Meux brewed only porter, a dark beer that was first brewed in London and was the most popular alcoholic drink in the capital. At the rear of the brewery ran New Street, a small cul-de-sac that joined on to Dyott Street; this was within the St Giles rookery. Thomas Beames, the preacher of Westminster St James, and author of the 1852 work The Rookeries of London: Past, Present and Prospective, described the St Giles rookery as "a rendezvous of the scum of society"; the area had been the inspiration for William Hogarth's 1751 print Gin Lane. At around 4:30 in the afternoon of 17 October 1814, George Crick, Meux's storehouse clerk, saw that one of the 700-pound (320 kg) iron bands around a vat had slipped. The force of the liquid's release knocked the stopcock from a neighbouring vat, which also began discharging its contents; several hogsheads of porter were destroyed, and their contents added to the flood. A wave of porter some 15 feet (4.6 m) high swept into New Street, where it destroyed two houses and badly damaged two others. The wave of beer swept the mother and the second child into the street; Hannah was killed. In the second destroyed house, a wake was being held by an Irish family for a two-year-old boy; Anne Saville, the boy's mother, and four other mourners (Mary Mulvey and her three-year-old son, Elizabeth Smith and Catherine Butler) were killed. Stories later arose of hundreds of people collecting the beer, mass drunkenness and a death from alcohol poisoning a few days later. Watchmen at the brewery charged people to view the remains of the destroyed beer vats, and several hundred spectators came to view the scene.

The coroner's inquest was held at the Workhouse of the St Giles parish on 19 October 1814; George Hodgson, the coroner for Middlesex, oversaw proceedings.

The Horse Shoe Brewery went back into business soon afterwards, but closed in 1921 when Meux moved their production to the Nine Elms brewery in Wandsworth, which they had purchased in 1914.

Quick Facts

• The escaping liquid dislodged the valve of another vessel and destroyed several large barrels: between 128,000 and 323,000 imperial gallons (580,000–1,470,000 L; 154,000–388,000 US gal) of beer were released in total.
• The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into an area of slum dwellings known as the St Giles rookery.
• Eight people were killed, five of them mourners at the wake being held by an Irish family for a two-year-old boy.
• The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that the eight had lost their lives "casually, accidentally and by misfortune".
• Meux's father, Sir Richard Meux, had previously co-owned the Griffin Brewery in Liquor-Pond Street (now Clerkenwell Road), in which he had constructed the largest vat in London, capable of holding 20,000 imperial barrels.

Source material: Wikipedia - "London Beer Flood". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.