The Dublin whiskey fire took place on June 18, 1875 and resulted in 13 deaths. None of the fatalities suffered during the fire were due to smoke inhalation, burns, or any other form of direct contact with the fire itself; all of them were attributed to alcohol poisoning from drinking the undiluted whiskey running through the streets, writes RAY CLEERE

 

Fire is no stranger to cities. The lives of Dubliners have also been devastated by fire, most notably the Stardust disaster in which 48 young people lost their lives on St. Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 1981. Less well known is Dublin’s great fire of 1875, which was often dubbed as the ‘Liberties Whiskey Fire’. The blaze which left a deep scorchmark seared through the oldest part of the city.

It was shortly after 8p.m. on Saturday evening, June 18th, 1875, 150 years ago, when a bonfire ignited in the early Vikings settlement of the Liberties, the oldest part of Dublin City, perched high above the River Liffey skirting Christchurch Cathedral. The whiskey flowed onto the streets of the Liberties as far as the Coombe Maternity Hospital.
However, the most remarkable aspect of the disaster was that of the 13 people who died, not one person died from burns or smoke inhalation. The cause of death was alcohol poisoning from drinking contaminated whiskey from the dirty Dublin streets.

The whiskey that burned in Dublin City during the blaze was worth £54,000; an approximate equivalent today, 150 years later, of €6.5 million.

The fire started at Reid’s malt-house and Malone’s bonded warehouse on Chamber Street, where 5,000 large barrels of whiskey, known as ‘puncheons’ were stored. The fire spread rapidly. As the flames reached the wooden casks holding the liquor, they exploded and a crazy cocktail of fire, whiskey and malt liquor flowed down Dublin’s Ardee Street, Cork Street and Mill Street like lava.
The blazing booze caught fire to everything it touched and spread the flames so quickly that it was impossible to do anything but run, or in some cases, try to capture the precious liquid before it went to waste.

As the burning whiskey flowed through the streets vast sheets of flames lit up the night sky. Crowds gathered to collect the free hot liquor in every pot, pan and jar they possessed; and when they were full they drank it from their pots as it ran down Ardee Street and into the adjoining streets.

Two porters at the time, named Healy and McNulty, were found “lying insensible” in a lane off Cork Street, with their boots off: they had evidently used them to collect the whiskey.
The flow measured 2 feet wide, 6 inches deep and stretched more than 400 metres down one side of Mill Street. Within two hours the fire had wreaked havoc on all the houses on one side of Mill Street and several in Chamber Street. A pub disappeared in flames and the smoke turned thicker and blacker to such an extent that the sky was invisible as the flames consumed a leather tannery in Mill Street which added an overbearing stench to the atmosphere.

Miraculously, the Watkins Brewery at Ardee Street somehow avoided the flames and the flowing lava; had the Brewery gone up in flames it would have compounded an already catastrophic situation.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own