Lulu's Dancing Bears

There were a lot of rotten ways to pass away in 1919, but who could have expected one of them to involve death by a molasses flood? You could be killed by the influenza epidemic that was sweeping the globe, die from infections that today are easily handled, or be drown in the Great Molasses Flood in Boston’s North End. That’s right. You read correctly. On January 15th, 1919, a huge tank that stored tons and tons of molasses burst and sent a wall of molasses at thirty-five miles an hour tearing down the streets, drowning, crushing, and asphyxiating people and animals in its path. When all was said and done, twenty one people were dead and millions in property damage had been done, by none other than molasses in January.

Prohibition was right around the corner; it was passed the next day in fact, and molasses was used to produce, among other things, ethyl alcohol. The Purity Distilling Company, seeing Prohibition’s handwriting on the wall, sold out to United States Industrial Alcohol in 1917, and the company stored molasses in the huge tanks that the Purity Company had, to be turned into legal industrial alcohol. One such tank, recently filled to the brim with about 2.3 million gallons of molasses, stood in Boston’s North End near the harbor. The molasses tank stood 58 feet tall and was 90 feet in diameter. The tank had been built there because the neighborhood was mostly full of Italian immigrants, not yet US citizens, who had very little political clout to stop such a project. At the time, such a monstrosity did not even require a permit to build. From the beginnings, this molasses tank was known to leak, but the company did little to insure it was safe.

The weather had been very cold prior to the 15th, but on that day the thermometer took a decided upwards turn, topping out at forty degrees. The exact reason for the molasses tank’s rupture was never decided proven, but the expansion of too much molasses in it due to the unusually warm weather was one theory. Another is that the tank was blown up by Italian anarchists, but that one was proposed by the company that owned the molasses tanks while they were trying to get out of the resulting lawsuits. Bombings by anarchists at the time were not uncommon, but the over 3,000 witnesses that later testified during the lawsuits did not support this contention. Poor construction and subsequent haphazard inspections of the molasses tank were also brought up, but no matter what the reason, at about half past noon, the tank basically exploded, sending molasses that had been fermenting everywhere.

The tank gave way with a dull roar; it seemed to rise a bit and then go to pieces, with rivets and bolts shooting off like rifle fire. Down the cobblestone streets came a fifteen foot high wall of brown death. The molasses flood engulfed and crushed everything in its path. Two children playing near the tank were engulfed and died almost instantly. The molasses flood tore down the street and broke the girders supporting the elevated train tracks. Laborers working in the area were trapped and drowned by the wave, which could not be outrun. Horses became mired in it; dozens would be mercifully shot when rescuers realized there was no chance to free them. By the time the molasses flood had run its course, there was a three foot deep layer of the sticky, brown syrup everywhere in the area.

The death toll rose from the molasses flood as new victims were found days later during the clean-up until it stood at twenty-one. Hundreds more were injured in the molasses flood. The awful job of getting rid of this molasses, which soon hardened, would literally take years; some say that the molasses smell lingered on for nearly three decades after the disaster. Fire boats would hose down the streets with salt water and then they were covered with sand to try to quell the molasses smell. Sightseers tracked the molasses all over the city. The lawsuits that followed from victims and their families took six years to be resolved. The anarchist bomb theory of why the molasses tank blew up was presented but in the end the company was held responsible for shoddy construction and lax inspections of the molasses tank. Industrial Alcohol paid out almost a million dollars in settlements.

Where the giant molasses tank once stood there is now a children’s park. Nothing is there to indicate that horrific death and destruction came down these streets in the form of a molasses flood so long ago. But some locals say that on a very hot day in Boston’s North End, you can still detect the faint odor of molasses.