A brewery vat burst and sent 100,000 gallons of beer through a London slum in 1814 — killing 8 people and somehow being ruled an act of God.
On October 17, 1814, a 22-foot-tall wooden fermentation vat at London's Horse Shoe Brewery burst after an iron band slipped, releasing between 128,000 and 323,000 gallons of porter beer. A storehouse clerk noticed the band had slipped and reported it — but was told by his supervisor that 'no harm whatever would ensue.' An hour later, the vat exploded.
The force of the rupture destroyed a 25-foot brewery wall and knocked the stopcock off a neighboring vat, adding even more beer to the flood. A 15-foot wave of porter swept into the streets of St Giles, one of London's most densely crowded and impoverished slums.
Eight people were killed — five of them at a wake being held in a basement for a two-year-old boy. The victims ranged in age from 3 years old to 65. Eleanor Cooper, a 14-year-old servant, was buried under the collapsed brewery wall.
At the coroner's inquest, the jury returned a verdict of death by 'misfortune' — classifying the entire disaster as an act of God. This meant the brewery owed zero compensation to any of the victims' families.
Not only did the brewery escape legal liability, it successfully petitioned Parliament for a refund on the excise tax it had paid on the beer — recovering the equivalent of roughly £500,000 in today's money. The victims' families received nothing.
The disaster cost Meux & Co about £23,000 (around £1.58 million today), but the parliamentary refund kept them from bankruptcy. Large wooden fermentation vats began to fall out of favor across the brewing industry afterward, gradually replaced by concrete vessels.
The Horse Shoe Brewery eventually closed in 1921. The site at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street is today occupied by the Dominion Theatre — built right on top of the spot where eight people drowned in beer.