Tradeston Flour Mills explosion
![]() Illustration of the aftermath of the Tradeston Flour Mills explosion published in the Illustrated London News on 20 July 1872 | |
![]() ![]() Tradeston Flour Mills | |
Date | 9 July 1872 |
---|---|
Location | Tradeston, Glasgow, Scotland |
Coordinates | 55°51′16″N 4°15′37″W / 55.854538°N 4.260381°W |
Cause | dust explosion |
Casualties | |
18 dead | |
16+ injured |
On 9 July 1872 the Tradeston Flour Mills, in Glasgow, Scotland, exploded.[1][2] Eighteen people died,[3] and at least sixteen were injured.[1][4]
The mill was owned by Matthew Muir & Sons, had been in operation for thirty years, and consisted of a five storey grain store on King Street (now Kingston Street), another grain store that occupied most of a four storey building on Clyde Place, and a four-storey grain mill building between the two, with three boilers and an engine shed attached.[1] This occupied the majority of the block surrounded by Clyde Place, Commerce Street, King Street and Centre Streets, with Gorbals Free Church, the Bute Hotel, some shops and some dwelling houses taking up the rest of the block.[1]
Explosion[]
At 4pm on 9 July, just as the day shift was about to finish, a large explosion blew out the front and back of the mill building.[1] Survivors of the explosion described a small initial explosion that filled the building with flour, and then a large explosion that blew out the walls.[5] The buildings were then engulfed in fire.[1] Employees of neighbouring businesses were also injured and killed in the explosion[1] Six people were taken to the Royal Infirmary with serious injuries, while another ten with less serious injuries were sent home to recover.[1]
Firefighters were dispatched from all but one of the city’s fire stations with firefighters from Bridgeton station being held in reserve in case of another fire.[1] An off-duty firefighter from the Central Fire Brigade had actually witnessed the explosion and flames while working on a roof across the river.[1] On arriving at the scene an immediate concern was preventing the fire from spreading to nearby buildings such as the riverside sheds or Bridge Street railway station (that was the original terminus of the Glasgow and Paisley Joint Railway before Glasgow Central station opened).[1] The windows of the station that faced onto Commerce Street had been shattered by the explosion, as well as parts of the glass roof, but firefighters were particularly concerned about the fire reaching the large spirit stores in the basement of the station.[1] Ships like Anchor Line’s Sidonian were moved away from the quayside for fear of the fire spreading.[1] After a few hours, the roof of the mill building collapsed and the remains of the wall facing onto Commerce Street collapsed into the street,[1] but by 11pm the fire was considered under control.[5]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Great_Explosion_of_Flour_at_Glasgow_-_From_a_photo_by_Thomas_Annan%2C_Glasgow.jpg/220px-Great_Explosion_of_Flour_at_Glasgow_-_From_a_photo_by_Thomas_Annan%2C_Glasgow.jpg)
The following day, while the fire was contained but continued to burn within the ruins, work started to remove insecure pieces of the remaining buildings that faced onto the surrounding streets.[5] While engaged in this work men discovered two bodies in a tenement at the corner of Clyde Place and Commerce Street.[5] One of these being Catherine Drennan a young widowed mother of five.[5] Three of her children were not home at the time of the explosion, but while one girl survived the explosion and escaped the subsequent fire, a nine-month old daughter died.[5] Efforts were made to look for survivors and recover bodies throughout the day but only two bodies were recovered, Jane Mulholland from County Londonderry, Ireland an employee of the Bute Hotel who had been retrieving clothes drying behind the hotel when the explosion occurred, and 14 year old James Tanner from Donaghadee, Ireland who had been working in the mill building.[5] During the day the site was visited by the city’s Lord Provost Sir James Lumsden, Master of Works John Carrick, Dean of Guild Alexander Ewing and procurator fiscals John Lang and James Neil Hart.[5]
Work to recover bodies continued through until at least 5 August with the final recovery being the body of 12 year old Robert Bell Burrett who had been employed as a sweeper in the mill.[6]
Investigation[]
Professor Macquorn Rankine and Dr. Stevenson Macadam were asked by an insurance company to investigate the cause of the explosion.[7] They interviewed survivors, visited operating mills, and studied similar incidents, and published their report on 9 August a month to the day after the explosion.[8] They theorised that the explosion was caused by a spark or fire from a pair of millstones igniting the finely ground flour dust in the air.[7][8] Flour mills like the one at Tradeston had exhaust fans that drew flour dust from the mill stones into an “exhaust box” and from there into a “stive room”.[7][8] Rankine and Macadam stated that the grain feed to a pair of mill stones had stopped, while the stones kept turning causing them to overheat.[7][8] They suggested that the stones started a fire that was drawn by the fan into the “exhaust box”, which then exploded distributing dust throughout the building, which then ignited causing the second larger explosion reported by survivors.[7][8]
Their primary recommendation was that exhaust boxes and stive rooms should be housed outside mill buildings and designed to “be readily blown to pieces” so that when similar fires happened they would be drawn out of buildings themselves and the force of any explosion expended externally.[8] Their conclusions were reported around the world, from the Belfast News-Letter,[9] and London’s The Pall Mall Gazette,[10] to Fort Wayne's Daily Sentinel[11] and The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.[12]
References[]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "Fearful Explosion and Great Fire in Tradeston - Great Loss of Life". The Glasgow Herald. 10 July 1872.
- ^ John K. McDowall (1899). The People's History of Glasgow. Hay Nisbet & Co.
- ^ "The Explosion and Fire in Tradeston". The Glasgow Herald. 12 July 1872.
- ^ Price, David J.; Brown, Harold H. (1922). Dust Explosions. National Fire Protection Association, Boston, Mass.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "The Explosion and Fire in Commerce Street". The Glasgow Herald. 11 July 1872.
- ^ "Tradeston Mill Catastrophe - Another Body Found". Glasgow Herald. 6 August 1872.
- ^ a b c d e "Explosions in Flour Mills". Scientific American. 27 (14). 5 October 1872.
- ^ a b c d e f Cornelius Walford (1874). The Insurance Cyclopeadia. Charles and Edwin Layton, London.
- ^ "The Destruction of Tradeston Flour Mills, Glasgow". The Belfast News-Letter. 15 August 1872.
- ^ "Occasional Notes". The Pall Mall Gazette. 22 August 1872.
- ^ "Will Flour Explode? - The Question Considered from a Scientific Stand-Point by a Noted Scotch Chemist". Daily Sentinel. 15 January 1873.
- ^ "Miscellaneous Items". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 17 December 1873.
- Building and structure fires in Scotland
- 1872 fires
- 1872 in Scotland
- 1870s in Glasgow
- Explosions in 1872
- Explosions in Scotland
- Disasters in Glasgow
- Fire and rescue in Scotland
- Commercial building fires
- Building collapses in the United Kingdom
- Building collapses caused by fire