January 15, 1919 was an unusually warm day in Boston, a welcome change from the typically cold temperatures Bostonians had experienced in the previous days. A little after 12:30 pm, the residents of the city’s North End neighborhood were going about their usual routines when all of the sudden they felt the ground shake, followed by a loud rumbling roar, as though the train had gone off the tracks. Then, without warning, a wave of molasses—reportedly fifty feet high—flooded the neighborhood with more than 2.5 million gallons of syrup, destroying buildings, toppling the nearby elevated train line, and killing twenty-one people.

One of the lesser told and remembered stories in Boston’s history, the great molasses flood of 1919 caused untold damage to one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods and injured more than 150 people, in addition to the twenty-one dead. Yet for an event so remarkable and strange, it is still unknown precisely what caused the Purity Distilling Company’s molasses storage tank to burst and dump its contents across the North End, making it one of Boston’s most bizarre pieces of folklore.

Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!

References

Boston Daily Globe. 1919. "Death toll from tank disaster 13." Boston Daily Globe, January 18: 1.

—. 1919. "Martin Clougherty awoke in a sea of sticky molasses." Boston Daily Globe, January 16: 7.

—. 1919. "Molasses tank explosion injures 50 and kills 11." Boston Daily Globe, January 16: 1.

—. 1919. "No Bill returned in tank disaster." Boston Daily Globe, February 13: 3.

—. 1919. "Official police report of North End disaster." Boston Daily Globe, January 16: 7.

—. 1919. "Scenes of anguish at relief station." Boston Daily Globe, January 16: 7.

Buell, Spencer. 2019. "Anarchists, horses, heroes: 12 things you didn't know about the Great Boston Molasses Flood." Boston Magazine, Janaury 12.

Daily Boston Globe. 1919. "Explosion theory favored by expert." Daily Boston Globe, January 16: 1.

—. 1919. "Mayor appalled, promises probe." Daily Boston Globe, January 16: 1.

Dwyer, Dialynn. 2019. "What people saw and felt in the first moments of Boston's dead Great Molasses Flood." Boston Globe, January 13.

Jabr, Ferris. 2013. "The science of the Great Molasses Flood." Scientific American, August 1.

Park, Edwards. 1983. "Without warning, molasses surged over Boston 100 years ago." Smithsonian Magazine, November 1.

Puleo, Stephen. 2004. Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

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Episode 657: Boston’s Great Molasses Flood of 1919

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