History's A Disaster

Dublin Whiskey Fire

• Andrew

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Blue flames raced down Dublin’s streets as thousands of gallons of whiskey burst from a burning warehouse and turned the Liberties into a flowing inferno. We take you straight into the 1875 Dublin Whiskey Fire—how casks exploded, why water made everything worse, and the moment a fire chief chose manure, ash, and tannery waste to smother an alcohol-fed blaze. It’s a wild story with sharp lessons on urban risk, crowd behavior, and the improvisation that saves cities when playbooks fail.

We set the scene in a city stripped by the Acts of Union, where grand Georgian homes had become crowded tenements and the whiskey trade filled vast bonded storehouses beside homes, stables, and tanneries. When Malone’s warehouse ignited, vapor and heat turned containment into chaos. Horses stampeded through blue flame, mourners fled a wake, and soldiers fixed bayonets to guard salvaged barrels as onlookers scooped raw spirit with bowls, hats, and boots. The result was grim and telling: thirteen deaths, none from burns, all from alcohol poisoning after drinking contaminated, unaged whiskey straight from the street.

Along the way, we unpack the decisions that mattered. Captain James Ingram understood that an alcohol fire is a spill problem before it’s a structure problem: identify the moving fuel, control the flow, and smother the surface. His call for absorbent waste—ash from privies, horse manure, and tan from tanneries—created a crude, effective barrier that modern responders would recognize as the logic behind alcohol-resistant foam and spill berms. Once the spread slowed, the Dublin Fire Brigade beat back building fires and held the line for days to prevent flare-ups and looting.

If you love vivid history with practical takeaways—fire science, urban planning, emergency strategy—this story delivers. Hear how industry, infrastructure, and human impulse collided on a single June night, and what it still teaches about storing risk in the heart of a city. If this episode made you think, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.

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Special thank you to Lunarfall Audio for producing and doing all the heavy lifting on audio editing since April 13, 2025, the Murder of Christopher Meyer episode https://lunarfallaudio.com/


SPEAKER_00:

You know what goes great with a nice Irish whiskey? Fire. Fire and alcohol are always a great combination. Nothing better than kicking back at a campfire with a glass of whiskey in hand and hoping that when you stand up, you're not too drunk that you fall forward into the fire. But of course, the only time they don't go great together is when there's thousands of gallons of whiskey flowing through the streets of a major city and it's on fire. Then it becomes just a tad bit of a problem, as Dublin would find out on the night of June 18th, 1875. So, what happened? I'm Andrew, and this is History's A Disaster. Tonight we're diving into an often overlooked tragedy that befell the city of Dublin in the late 19th century. Primary source of research tonight is Las Falon's book, The Great Liberties Whiskey Fire. And tonight's episode is brought to you by The Boot Flask. It'll protect your feet and get you drunk. Perfect for concerts and sneaking into work. And on the rare occasion of being confronted with gallons of free liquor. Now to set the stage a bit, we're gonna take a look back into Dublin's past and the fire brigade that would face an enormous challenge with the fire. Dublin saw many ups and downs, and in the early 1800s, it was in a bit of a downturn. After the Acts of Union of 1800, which saw the seat of government move to London, after the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland merged into one kingdom. With this, Dublin saw a serious economic collapse. With the move to London, the once great and beautiful Georgian houses turned to tenements, which would house thousands of the city's poor and desperate. The Liberties area of Dublin suffered even more. The Liberties was an older area of the city and the buildings there were never of the quality of those more towards the center of town. It was kind of on the outskirts. Dublin would play no part in the Industrial Revolution. It did not have the industrial base that Belfast enjoyed. The one thing it did have was whiskey. Irish whiskey is arguably the best whiskey in the world, and whiskey made in Dublin was the best of the best. In the early 1800s, Dublin set itself up as a major distillery center. Demand across the British Empire and America was high for the good shit. At its height in the 1800s, they were pushing out over 10 million gallons of whiskey a year, with one of the largest distilleries, Roe, doing 2 million gallons alone. There were several other distilleries in the area, including brands that are still around today, like Jameson. Breweries like Guinness were also pretty big in the area. And thanks to the Excise Act of 1823, they could make and store as much whiskey or beer as they wanted, store it in these bonded storehouses, and not have to pay taxes on it until it was sold or ready to be sold. Prior to this act, they had to pay for it when it was made, so they wouldn't make anything off the alcohol for potentially years when it was finally ready to be sold. The act made distilleries much more profitable and let them make more alcohol. And one of the largest of these bonded storehouses was Malone's. It took up an entire city block and housed thousands of barrels of whiskey and other alcohol, surrounded by Cork Street to the north, Chamber Street to the south, Ardy Street to the east, and Ormond to the west. Malone's was packed in and surrounded by shitty tenement buildings and small businesses. So the whole area was packed, overcrowded, and I'm gonna assume smelled like shit. Since this was the 1800s, so there was horses all over, and horse shit removal was a pretty steady job since, well, there was piles of it all over. Plus, there was pig pens in the area with many people having pigs and chickens for either food or to provide some kind of income for the poor people that lived in these tenements. The other thing Dublin had at the time besides the whiskey was the Dublin Fire Brigade, a fire and rescue division founded in 1862 and commanded by Captain James Ingram, who had returned to Ireland after spending some time in America as both an engraver and a firefighter before taking up the position to be the first commander of the fire brigade. He went about building up the new brigade, filling out its roster with sailors, tradesmen, and soldiers. People from different backgrounds that brought varying skills that would be beneficial to the new brigade. They would be well equipped with both steam and manual pump engines and able to hook up to the new water system that brought clean water into the city under high pressure. Prior to the brigade's founding, fire services were normally ran by one of three groups. The Waterworks Fire Brigade, which was a small voluntary brigade ran by the Waterworks Department. The Parish Pump Brigades, which was ran by the Church of Ireland, each church in the city maintained two engines that were supposed to be available for use in their own and surrounding parishes. And then, there was probably the most sketchy of the three. The fire insurance companies maintained a small trained unit for fighting fires, as long as your premiums were paid. If your house was on fire and you did not have the company's fire mark on it, well, you were shit out of luck. Guess you should have paid for the insurance. So with that bit of background out of the way, we can get into the main event, the whiskey fire, whose origins is still unknown. We don't know where or why it started. There's reports that it started in Reid's mouthhouse, which is next to Malone's, and mouthhouses are for sure fire hazards. However, in Captain Ingram's later reports, he would say the fire definitely started in Malone's. But what we do know is that at 4.45 on the afternoon of June 18th, Mr. Lin, an excise officer, finished his inspections of Malone's, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, locked up and left for the day. By 8 30 though, all hell had broken loose. The fire could be seen from blocks around. The fire had grown so hot and so powerful that it had burst through the roof of the building, which just added more oxygen to fuel the fire. The alarm was raised as flames began to engulf the malt house and storehouse on Chamber Street. Within minutes, what had started as a localized blaze transformed into something far more spectacular and dangerous. The fire spread rapidly through the wooden structure, fed by the highly flammable alcohol vapors that filled the air. As the flames inside Malone's reached the stored barrels, the heat caused the wooden casks to burst open with explosive force. Thousands of gallons of whiskey, some of it burning, came cascading through the building and out into the streets, the burning blue flames of alcohol reaching heights of 20 feet as it spread. Once the burning liquid reached Chamber Street and Cork Street, it followed the foul of the street and gravity just helped spread the rapid flow of the growing river of burning liquid. From near the corner of Cork Street, the blue flamed liquid rapidly ran down Ardy Street. Reeds was already burning, and a tannery and the stables of Watkins Brewery, just across the road, were on fire. Watkins itself would get lucky and be spared, but other buildings along the surrounding streets would not have the same luck. They began to burn as the liquid fire seeped under doors and gates. The burning flood, as one witness called it, flowed into every courtyard and doorway. Everywhere the running liquid could reach was no longer safe as it carried the fire with it. Residents of the area tried to save what little they owned before the flames could claim it. Many of them threw their furniture and anything else they owned from the upper floors of buildings just for it to be smashed on the street below and adding more fuel to the rapidly spreading fire. A row of houses on Mill Street would soon fall to the flames. A pub on the corner of Ardy Street and Chamber Street began to burn, and the disabled owner, Lawrence Fitzsimmons, had to be carried out. Continuing down Chamber Street, the burning liquid disturbed awake. The corpse was removed, but soon abandoned a safe distance away as the mourners returned to join the crowd, which had swelled in size with thousands who had gathered to see the fire. Adding to all this chaos, pigs, horses, and dogs were let loose to find safe haven from the flames. But one of these horses would walk into the burning river. In its fear and pain, it turned and ran, which caused a stampede as it ran down Ardy Street through the river of flame, followed by several other horses and a number of pigs. On Osman Street, the spreading fire began to flow toward the Carmelite convent there. A strong breeze would end up blowing the fire back across the street, which saved the convent but burnt down a row of tenement houses. So the nuns were spared, thank God. But you know what? Fuck those poor people. The nearby Comb Maternity Hospital was having some work done at the time, so the side of the building was covered in wooden scaffolding, which got hit by flaming debris carried on the wind. Workers, helped out by firemen, climbed the scaffolding and got it cut away from the hospital before it could carry the flame inside. The Warren Mount Convent off Mill Street was also in danger from this burning debris, and a group of men were set to deal with the danger. While all this was happening, just to add to it, the escaping whiskey made it into the sewers. And from there, it reached the underground puddle river. Pretty sure it's not pronounced puddle, but I have no idea how to Puddle? Puddle? I'm going with puddle. While underground, the burning liquid found pockets of sewer gases, which would set off a number of small explosions underground. As Malone's continued to burn, more and more barrels of whiskey bursted, adding to the flood. Back at Malone's, as it continued to burn, more and more barrels of whiskey were bursting and adding to the flood. The excitement of the fire, because it's the 1800s, and what else is there to do? Plus, the smell of whiskey filling the air drew in larger and larger crowds. People began scooping up the free whiskey in whatever they had cups, bowls, hats. And for a few, when all else fails, they use their boots. The growing crowd was getting drunk off the free shitty street whiskey that was setting the neighborhood on fire. All along the street and surrounding area, people, including kids, were falling over drunk. Some of them were able to stumble their way home, while many more were found passed out a distance away. Others, many of them, were now lying in the very streets where the fires were burning. When Captain Ingram and the fire brigade arrived, he saw the growing fire was much larger than his small brigade could handle. He sent runners out to ask for help from the cops and the military. If they couldn't help put out the fire, they could at least work to control the increasingly drunken crowds. Nearly 300 troops that were stationed nearby were sent out to assist the police in crowd control, along with conducting salvage operations. Over 60 barrels of whiskey were saved from the fire at Malone's and put under military guard on Cork Street. But the crowd was getting a bit rowdy and overwhelming, and a few of them had their eyes on the whiskey they were guarding. So the troops were ordered to fix bayonets to repel looters trying to steal the barrels. While they would keep a hold of these barrels, some people would get a hold of other undamaged barrels and make off with them. With one group in particular taking the barrel into an alleyway and drilling a hole into it. And since they didn't have cups, they just used their hats. And when that was too much of a hassle, or well, they were too drunk to stand, they laid on the ground and drank directly from the barrel as the whiskey poured out. The troops also helped man the pumps and hit the blazing whiskey with water. Except there was a problem. An alcohol fire is like a grease fire. Spray it down with water, and you just make it worse. Alcohol being less dense than water just floats to the top of it. So the water being hosed on was just spreading it further and adding to the flood. Captain Ingram, known for some out-of-the-box thinking, had to find a way to stop the spread. So one of the first things he did was order the sewers blocked. He wanted to prevent any more burning whiskey carrying fire to other parts of the city and to stop those pesky underground explosions. Then he had the troops issued with picks and shovels and told them to dig up the streets ahead of the fire, hoping to create a fire break and let the whiskey absorb into the ground underneath the road. Which did not work. The whiskey just continued on over the exposed earth unhindered. Thinking quickly, Ingram sent out a call for ashes, manure, and tan. So while calling for ash might seem a little odd, like why does he want more ash? Shit is literally turning to ash around him. It's not the ash you're thinking of. He was actually calling for shit. Before they had indoor plumbing, people in these shitty tenements had an ash pit in the back somewhere where they dumped their chamber pots. These were technically supposed to be cleaned out regularly, but that didn't always happen. Which would often lead to the remnants flowing through the house and into the streets when it rained. Called these tenements shitty for a reason, just saying. Anyways, that's what he was asking for here. Pretty sure I don't need to explain what manure is, but like I said earlier, lots of horses meant lots of horse shit laying around. Shit that was often collected and stored and typically sold off to farmers as fertilizer. So that's what he was wanting here. All the horse shit that had been collected and was just sitting in some smelly ass building. And the last thing he called for was tan. And surprisingly, it's not more shit. Well, mostly not shit, anyways. It's actually a little bit worse. Tan was leftovers from all the tanneries in the city. The tanning process at the time involved treating animal skins with a mix of piss, dog shit, and animal brains. So that's what he was looking for was the leftover piss shit and brains from the tanning process. So basically, he wanted shit shit and more shit mixed with piss and brains. So when all this shit started to show up, he ordered the troops to start shoveling the shit in the dams and spreading it on burning areas. And it worked. When the burning whiskey hit the wet shit, it was absorbed by it and it went out. The spread of the fire was starting to stop. So when fighting fire with fire doesn't work, just shit on it. Just a little tip for ya. With the spread of the fire halted and under control, the firefighters could work on putting the fires in the buildings out with more traditional firefighting methods. Captain Ingram set the brigade and their fire pumps to work. The manual hand pumps were highly effective, and soon his men began to get the upper hand over the blaze. Many of the buildings unfortunately had totally burned out before the brigade could get to them. In total, nearly 40 buildings were completely destroyed, often at a huge loss to the owners. Malone's was insured and would get some money, so it wasn't a total loss. Firefighters would remain on the scene for five days to check for the possibility of flare-ups, and a detachment of police were also on hand to prevent people looting the ruins, especially after stories spread of the discovery of an unburnt cask of whiskey in the ruins as they were pulled down by workmen in the days after the fire. Many in the area that night were unable to walk, and even more were taken to local hospitals for treatment. Eight men were carried to the Meath Hospital in a Comato state, with another 12 brought to Jervis Street Hospital, 3 to Dr. Stevens' Hospital, and 1 to Mercer's. And that's just who made it there the night of the fire. Some were still being found the next day in back alleys and courtyards where they had collapsed. The official death toll from the tragedy stands at 13, and not a single one of those deaths was caused by the fire or smoke inhalation. Every single person died from alcohol poisoning. And the most surprising thing to me, at least, is that it was only 13. Most, if not all, of the whiskey flowing through the streets was raw, undiluted whiskey that was technically considered not fit for human consumption. The main reason for these storehouses is the aging process wasn't done yet, so they weren't ready for sale. And it's also highly possible the actual death toll could be much higher. There were many who fell into comas after the fire that would never wake up. And you know that whiskey they were drinking had to have all kinds of nasty shit in it. They were scooping it straight off the street. A street that was normally filled with animal and human shit and who knows what other kinds of bacteria. And being the 1800s, they had no way of knowing things like that, or the medicines to fight off whatever kinds of internal infections or diseases they picked up. And anyone wanting to make some dumb joke about oh it's the Irish sounds like something those dumb drunks would do. You know what? Fuck off. Put this fire anywhere else and you get the same thing. You have the same jackasses in Chicago or New York as you do in Dublin. At least the Irish are honest about their drinking problems. They made it part of their culture. And that was the Dublin Whiskey Fire of 1875. Thanks for listening, and if you liked the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your app of choice. And you can reach out to the show at historiesadisaster at gmail.com with questions, comments, or suggestions. As well as following the show on social media like Facebook, Instagram, and a few others, TikTok, YouTube, whatever. And share the episode. Your friends will love it. And take care of yourself out there. Chase that dream. Live for today. Drink some whiskey because tomorrow is never guaranteed. Thanks and goodbye.