What really happened in the London Beer Flood 200 years ago?

independent
An unlimited, free supply of beer – it sounds wonderful doesn’t it? But when it is over one million litres in volume and in a tidal wave at least 15 feet high, as it was in the London Beer Flood on 17 October 1814, the prospect seems less appealing.
Two hundred years to this day, a broken vat at the Horse Shoe Brewery on Tottenham Court Road flooded the local area with porter, a dark beer native to the capital, killing eight people and demolishing a pair of homes.
George Crick, the clerk on duty, told a newspaper what happened: “I was on a platform about 30 feet from the vat when it burst.
I heard the crash as it went off, and ran immediately to the storehouse, where the vat was situated.
It caused dreadful devastation on the premises - it knocked four butts over, and staved several, as the pressure was so excessive. Between 8 and 9,000 barrels of porter [were] lost.”
The beer inundated the nearby slum of St Giles Rookery – an area of poverty and vice which inspired Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’ – flooding the cellars where whole families lived.
Some of the inhabitants survived by clambering onto pieces of furniture. Others were not so lucky.
Hannah Banfield, a little girl, was taking tea with her mother, Mary, at their house in New Street when the deluge hit. Both were swept away in the current, and perished.