S6 E15: Food for Thought - The Great Molasses Flood

In this episode of the Three Kitchens podcast, Heather shares the bizarre and tragic story of the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. She and Erin discuss the events leading up to the disaster, the mechanics of the flood, eyewitness accounts, and the aftermath, including the legal repercussions and changes in safety regulations. The conversation is filled with humour and insights into the historical significance of this unusual event.

Sources: 

Last Podcast on the Left, episode 642: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 Part 1 - Killer Condiments

Wikipedia - Great Molasses Flood

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Transcript

Heather (00:02)
Welcome to Three Kitchens podcast. This is another episode of Food for Thought.

Erin (00:11)
Hmm.

Heather (00:12)
Hmm, what is food for thought? It's just an excuse for us to talk about whatever the heck we feel like talking about with some kind of connection to food.

Erin (00:20)
Yeah.

Well we're always sharing these little quips and bits about food stuffs that we learn and we thought we're entertaining, everybody else wants to listen to this too. So we've added it in.

Heather (00:38)
Well, you never know. You never know what other people, I mean, I feel like if I find it interesting, chances are you will and vice versa when you've got a story or whatever. And our listeners are our people. So I feel like at least some of them will be interested in whatever it is we want to talk about.

Erin (00:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I think if people aren't... If people are just here to listen to us talk because we're such great storytellers, then we have, you know, we've opened up new possibilities.

Heather (01:17)
New possibilities for whatever. If anyone out there is like in the market for podcast hosts and they just want people to tell their stories, give us a call. We're your people. There you go. Okay. Well, let's just all remember that this is not a deep dive. It is a dipping our toe in a subject or story.

Erin (01:28)
Here we go.

Heather (01:44)
And that's relevant today because I have a bit of, I have a story time for you all and it's a little bit sort of true crime slash survival. And these types of stories tend to be very in depth when you really get into the weeds in them. And this is no exception. So I'm not giving you the exhaustive research on this story. If you're into it, check the show notes. There's some other.

Erin (02:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather (02:13)
very excellent podcasters who tell the story in far more detail. will tell you where to go to listen to it because it's kind of crazy. It's a little bit crazy. All right.

Erin (02:24)
⁓ I have no idea what to expect. I know nothing about this, so I'm like, come on, Heather.

Heather (02:30)
Come on!

Okay, so in 1919, a giant wave of molasses, seven and a half meters high and moving at 55 kilometers an hour ripped through Boston's north end, Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. It killed 21 people, injured 150 people,

and left the city smelling of molasses for decades. This is the story of the great Boston molasses flood of 1919.

Erin (03:11)
Did it also leave the streets sticky for decades?

Heather (03:14)
I would imagine yes.

Erin (03:16)
I feel

like I can hear my boots doing that, fluk of detaching, like when you walk out of a movie theater. I feel like that's me walking down a street in Boston now. Okay.

Heather (03:19)
Yeah.

Oh yeah, so gross. Yeah.

So 1919, this was what, a hundred and...

I don't even know. can't do the math. 108 or something years ago. Yeah, like so at all. And it was what did I say the date? I don't have it. We'll get there. Oh, January 14th, 1919. So yeah, we're coming up on the anniversary, depending when this episode comes out.

Erin (03:39)
just over a hundred years ago.

How?

Okay.

Yes, we are coming up on the anniversary.

Heather (04:01)
Yeah. So I thought, let's talk about it. Let's, let's go. And I need you all to use your imagination and really visualize this. Because when I first heard this story, I could really imagine this. Like if you're familiar with molasses, imagine it. Seven and a half meters high and going at the speed of a

Erin (04:04)
How timely.

Okay.

Heather (04:30)
55 kilometers an hour. That's how does it even move that fast? Like that's it's in that just to me is insane.

Erin (04:37)
I molasses

was slow.

Heather (04:41)
Yeah, right? Slow as molasses.

Erin (04:43)
Especially especially

in January like come on it's it's not like it was the heat of summer or anything like that come on okay okay you've got me

Heather (04:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know. Okay.

Okay, so let's talk about molasses. Molasses is a thick sticky syrup made from sugar cane or sugar beets. And at the time, molasses wasn't just for like baking cookies, as we know it now, right? It's kind of a key ingredient in something like gingerbread. But it was a crucial moneymaking commodity.

Erin (05:15)
Hmm.

Heather (05:20)
It was import imported in bulk to be fermented, which then produces industrial ethanol. Who knew? Not me. The ethanol was used as a key ingredient in munitions like dynamite and smokeless powder. Remember, we're talking 1919. What was happening at the time? World War One. Happened at that time. ⁓

Erin (05:40)
Okay.

Heather (05:50)
The purity distilling company in Boston stored and processed molasses to create this essential alcohol to meet the wartime demand.

So the Purity Distilling Company had this massive steel tank in Boston. It was 15 meters, which is, put for our American listeners, 50 feet tall, 27 meters or 90 feet in diameter. So it's a very large tank of molasses. Okay, so yeah, so this is just where they're storing it. It held.

Erin (06:28)
That's massive.

Heather (06:33)
8,700 cubic meters or, this sounds even more impressive, 2.3 million US gallons of molasses in the tank. ⁓

Erin (06:46)
That's a lot. That's a

huge reservoir.

Heather (06:51)
Yeah, it's massive. But here's the problem. This tank was poorly constructed and inadequately maintained. So this is where we're getting like, well, of course, and this is why it falls into like what you would call a true crime story because there's some shady business practices that contributed to this really horrific event.

Erin (07:04)
I can see that's where this is going.

Mmm.

Ooh,

okay.

Heather (07:21)
And I've heard this ⁓ story told a couple of different times on podcasts. And one detail that sticks in my mind is that the man in charge, I didn't make note of his name. Who cares? Let's not give him any air time personally, but he cut numerous corners, including having cracks in the tank painted brown to camouflage leaks.

Erin (07:50)
He sounds like a solid businessman, Heather.

Heather (07:50)
Yeah, right?

Like, what? And who thought this was a good idea to go along with that? Yeah, sure. I'll just paint it and then we won't notice the that it's burst like that it's like pushing up the seams. Terrible. OK, so on January 14th, 1919, ⁓ a ship delivered a fresh load of molasses.

Erin (08:10)
Hey?

Heather (08:20)
And what they did was warm it to make it easier to transfer, right? ⁓ So it had been warmed a bit and then they transferred it into the tank on top of molasses that was already in the tank. So they were topping it up with a new load of molasses. And then it was on the next day, January 15th, that cruddy old poorly maintained patched

Erin (08:26)
of course.

behemoth

of a tank.

Heather (08:49)
Tank finally

burst. And another possible contributing factor was the thermal expansion of the older, colder molasses that was already in the tank when the new load of warm molasses was added. Plus the temperature that day in Boston had risen above four degrees Celsius after having been much colder in the previous days. So suddenly the temperature went up, you have colder molasses.

with warmer molasses. It's a whole recipe for disaster.

Erin (09:24)
I'm just imagining

the noise that this would have this like glug glug glug from this like really thick liquid being filled into this tank. I mean, I don't know how they filled it. I don't know if they had a pump, but I just...

Heather (09:38)
I don't know that detail.

Erin (09:40)
Yeah, this is fascinating. Okay.

Heather (09:42)
Yeah, you can just picture it, right? And for the benefit of the video watchers, I have a small, this is from like last year's Christmas baking and it's not full, but so I've been putting it upside down and I thought let's open my little container of molasses and just see how fast it moves. I don't really know. It's like, it's kind of been in the cupboard for a while, but let's.

Erin (09:44)
Yeah.

Okay.

Heather (10:11)
just let's just have a look my god i'm making a mess i'm gonna just put the lid in the bowl okay let's see and this is not warm it's my house is kind of cold right now okay like it moves right

Erin (10:28)
it gets going.

Heather (10:30)
Yeah, like...

You can see it's like pouring. So imagine if it's warmed up, could move a lot faster.

Erin (10:43)
And especially if it's got some weight behind it, which however many umpteen gallons, millions of gallons that were there, it's got some weight. It's gonna start moving with some momentum behind it. And it is just going to take down everything in sight. Yeah.

Heather (10:44)
Yeah.

BWAH!

Everything in its path. Yeah.

So at approximately 1230 PM, as locals are going about their day, sitting down to lunch, running errands, the tank burst open and collapsed, setting loose a dark wave of molasses, apparently eight meters high at its peak, which is about as high as a two story building. I think.

if I have that right.

Erin (11:30)
I'm like trying

to imagine this 15 meter tank.

Good, yeah. This is-

Heather (11:38)
Like, I don't really know how it like

burst all at once. Maybe like the whole thing just kind of like I'm picturing it being like just coming open and the whole it must have been. Yeah.

Erin (11:48)
Have we seen those pools collapse? You know, those big backyard

pools that people have and then it just like whoosh comes out and people like get taken out by this tidal wave? This is what I'm imagining.

Heather (11:59)
But how did the molasses get so high? Like the wave of it. It's really hard to imagine, isn't it?

Erin (12:07)
Yeah, I mean like, that's just the whole.

Heather (12:09)
You'd think it would just

sort of go along the ground and spread, not gain height.

Erin (12:14)
I know.

I bet it would gain height just because all of a sudden it's been released and then there's that pressure pushing down and it's like...

Heather (12:22)
my god. Just like, good lord.

Erin (12:23)
Good grief. Is it also

on top of a hill? I don't know what the topography of Boston is, but I'm picturing this ominous tank just sitting on top of the hill, like Vesuvius about to like, pow!

Heather (12:32)
Me too. Yeah.

I also have, sorry. I also picture it being on a hill and kind of now gaining momentum coming down. Let's see if it says I, I wrote the script a while back and I don't recall. Let's see if we find out any more details. Okay. So to make things worse, there was a nearby elevated train track.

which was wiped out in the flood. So this molasses took out the trestles under an elevated train track. Buildings crumbled, horses and wagons were swept away, not just stuck, but like pushed and swept away and people were trapped in it. And by the time it was over, 21 people were dead, ⁓ 150 injured.

Erin (13:10)
yeah.

They're done.

Cool.

Heather (13:27)
and the neighborhood was left coated in molasses. The cleanup took weeks. Locals swore the smell of molasses lingered in Boston for decades. I would love it if somebody lives in Boston and knows like any detail. listening knows any, like, do you have a grandparent who said, yeah, like do have a grandparent who's like, I remember the smell in the 1950s. It still smelled like molasses or I don't know, whatever.

Erin (13:45)
Do we have any Bostonians?

on a hot summer day, you could lick the sidewalks. Although it's not in the South, so I don't know why that accent is coming. I'm not gonna try Boston. No, no, no, that'd be awful. How long did this gooey thing, because it wouldn't have just like come and run through like a wave on a beach. It would have oozed.

Heather (13:58)
Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Exactly.

⁓ me either. my God, how embarrassing that would be.

No.

Erin (14:25)
Like how long did it take for that tank to empty out?

Heather (14:25)
Yeah, yeah. Well, it

was going 55 kilometers an hour. That's not quite an ooze, right? Like that's actually kind of fast.

Erin (14:33)
Right, but

it's super fast, but then as it slowed down, it would just keep going and keep going and keep going and...

Heather (14:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, and pooling in places, I'm sure. So you'd have like big sticky mucky. Well, the

Erin (14:50)
I can imagine

if you got trapped in that, like you'd be done for. Like it would take you down and then it would just eat you up.

Heather (14:54)
Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm picturing

is that's why I said use your imagination. Can you imagine being like drowned, suffocated in molasses? I don't know. It's just like so awful.

Erin (15:04)
No.

I don't think you could drown in

it. I think you'd just suffocate. I don't know. ⁓ okay, yeah.

Heather (15:14)
Well, yeah, I guess that, yeah.

Okay, so the Boston Globe newspaper printed a story about the tragedy the next day. And here's an excerpt telling one person's firsthand account. Robert Burnett was eating dinner with his family at 536 Commercial Street, which was opposite from the tank and had a view of the elevated rail line. He says there was a rumble, no roar or explosion.

Erin (15:38)
Okay.

Heather (15:45)
I thought it was an elevated train until I heard a swish as if wind was rushing. And then it became dark. And I looked out the window and I saw this great black wave coming. It didn't rush. It just rolled slowly, it seemed, like the side of a mountain falling into space. Of course, it came quickly, but we all had a chance to jump and run before the windows began to crack.

and then it poured molasses.

He and his family followed their first impulses to run to the street, but when they opened the door to the hall of their apartment building, they saw molasses had already reached the top of the 14-step flight of stairs. They ran instead to the roof of the building.

Erin (16:22)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (16:36)
The tragedy led to one of the first major class action lawsuits in US history. The parent company responsible, United States Industrial Alcohol, was found liable and forced to pay damages. And out of this disaster came a new era of stricter engineering standards and building safety regulations.

Erin (16:59)
Well, thank goodness for that. At least we're not painting over structural cracks anymore.

Heather (17:00)
I mean, at least there was that.

Hopefully not. I mean, they also, I don't think use molasses this way anymore either.

Erin (17:14)
Yeah, I don't know.

Heather (17:16)
maybe this thing in particular is not an issue now. I just like, I don't, was it a thing for you? We're a little bit different in age, but I remember a thing when I was like a little kid that we spent some time thinking about how we would get out of quicksand. It was like a real thing that scared us. Like we thought at some point in our lives,

We're going to end up in quicksand, right?

Erin (17:48)
Yes, and

we've all seen the memes that are like, based on my childhood, I thought quicksand would play much bigger role in my life. And I laugh because like, yes, this was like one of those ridiculous fears that you had as a child. Like, I gotta know how to get out of quicksand. What do I do? What don't I do?

Heather (17:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I feel like

this feels similar, right? Like being stuck in molasses would feel a bit like quicksand. And if it's deep enough, it might just kind of, you might just sink into it and you can't get out. I don't even remember how we used to think we would get out of quicksand. I think it was like, don't wiggle too much. Yeah.

Erin (18:10)
Ciao!

Don't struggle. That was,

the more you struggle, the faster you sink. Ha! See, we're survivors like that.

Heather (18:29)
Yeah.

We

were prepared. But that's what I picture when I hear this story. Like, glug, glug, glug. my God.

Erin (18:40)
⁓ man.

I mean, I'm just picturing the clean, like how do you clean this up? Where did the wave stop? Did it go into water? mean, Boston is a port.

Heather (18:55)
Yeah.

Erin (18:56)
a port town? Like, did it just like...

Heather (18:58)
I feel like it would have needed to be close to the harbor in order for the shipments of molasses to come in and be put into the tank without trucking them really far, right? But did it go from the harbor down into the town? I don't really know.

Erin (19:02)
Yeah.

Okay, yep, totally.

Wow.

Heather (19:21)
because it didn't just head for the water and go into the, know, it took out buildings and the rail line.

Erin (19:32)
See this is where it's too bad we don't have those iPhone cameras or those first-hand accounts from the media that got on scene right away to ask these people what it was like because I feel like those are the best clips when there is a disaster. It's the one light-sided thing we can look at but yeah.

Heather (19:52)
Yeah.

We have to just read the account from the newspaper.

Ugh, this freaks me out.

Erin (20:05)
Do you think there was like a molasses line on the buildings? You know, from the...

Heather (20:05)
like

Yeah.

brown from here down and then over time it's just like sticky and kind of other stuff sticks to it like dirt sticks to it and

Erin (20:16)
⁓ man.

Yeah.

Heather (20:24)
Right? Birds fly into it. No, I don't know. Yeah.

Erin (20:27)
I know I'm picturing feathers right now too and I don't know why.

Feathers and molasses.

Heather (20:35)
⁓ and just that sticky feel like you said under your shoes and like

Erin (20:40)
Well, molasses is that thing in the kitchen, since you demonstrated with the curtain that it comes in. Whenever you have to use it when you're baking, I don't know about you, but I always don't get the perfect... Like there's always a bit stuck somewhere. And then you know it right away. Because then you touch it and then you touch your cabinet and then it's on your cabinet and then... And then you have to go and wipe everything.

Heather (20:56)
Yeah.

⁓ yeah. No, you don't know. And like scooping it out of a measuring cup.

Like, yeah, it's just, it's such a pain in the ass. Yeah.

Erin (21:11)
That's impossible.

Heather (21:18)
Yeah, but speaking of baking, if anyone listening wants to bake something with molasses, now maybe we've inspired you. I don't know if you want to go anywhere near it after this story, but if you do, we have a pretty fantastic gingerbread recipe on the website. ⁓ even gave her ⁓ pattern for a gingerbread house, but since we're into January, you might want

to just cut them into different shapes, but it's very delicious gingerbread.

Erin (21:52)
Yeah, and while you bake, imagine an eight foot wave coming at you.

Heather (21:57)
while you're pouring your molasses into your measuring cup and then trying to scoop it and then trying to wash it. Just picture it. ⁓

Erin (22:00)
Imagine that.

Ooh, hot tip.

When I work with molasses and I have to use a measuring cup, I put a little bit of cooking oil at the bottom of it first before pouring it in. And then the oil rises up and coats the sides as the molasses pours in. And then it dumps out way easier.

Heather (22:21)
Yeah, good point. It's also useful if you're making anything with honey or maple syrup or anything sticky like that. Especially if there's oil in the recipe, measure the oil first and then you're golden. Yeah, yeah, good point. Well, there you go. I wrote here, the great molasses flood stands today as a strange but powerful reminder, even something as ordinary as molasses.

Erin (22:32)
Mm. That's always the best. Yeah.

Heather (22:49)
once a cornerstone ⁓ cornerstone of industry can become deadly when greed and negligence outweigh safety. We're getting dramatic here today, folks.

Erin (23:02)
Dun dun dun!

Alright, I love this. I've never heard about this before and now I want to go to Boston, Heather. Visit our GoFundMe page.

Heather (23:07)
You

I know. Do you think they have a memorial?

Do they have a memorial on this site or anything for the great molasses flood?

Erin (23:21)
They should, what would they put,

what would be on that statue?

Heather (23:28)
It would just be a person stuck, like stuck or two people stuck together. I don't know. I don't know.

Erin (23:35)
Just

a hand coming out of a blob.

Heather (23:37)
that's dark. I love it though. That's hilarious.

Erin (23:39)
Holding the plaque.

Sorry.

Heather (23:51)
Yeah, well, go to the show notes and listen to one of these other shows that I will recommend if you're curious to learn more more details, because it really is a fascinating story. Crazy.

Erin (23:59)
Ooh, okay.

Yeah, that's crazy. There's gotta be

some pictures too, somewhere.

Heather (24:09)
Yeah maybe. Yeah they're probably they're probably would be. I don't know what they'd look like after the fact. Bunch of rubble and brown stuff.

Erin (24:11)
Maybe.

Yeah, sticky.

It would be all black and white. Yeah.

Heather (24:21)
Yeah, yeah, so I don't

know how it would look unless they got pictures of like people or like you're talking about people or animals or something stuck. That'd be gross. Yeah, people trying to get out. It's like I went to Pompeii when we were in Italy. And you know, they have the preserved people.

Erin (24:32)
Right? Four horse legs just sticking up. Aww.

Heather (24:47)
who were covered in the ash and it preserved them. And when they found them, they're like curled up in a fetal position or something, or with their heads like this waiting, just waiting for it to come and kill them basically.

Erin (24:47)
Mm-hmm.

It happened early morning, did it not? So lots of people are still in bed? Like the whole market wasn't even open yet? It happened at a... Yeah.

Heather (25:06)
Yeah, I think so. But they knew it was some, I think they knew

it was coming. They had enough time to at least move closer, like went a little further away and like huddled together. it's awful. But anyways, I don't think the molasses left like mummified people behind or anything like that.

Erin (25:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay.

molassified.

Heather (25:32)
So good.