The children of North End, Boston, play in the shadow of an enormous steel tank of molasses. The thick, sticky sugar syrup is being used to make munitions for the First World War. When a worker notices dark molasses seeping from the tank, hewarns the company that there could be a leak. But the man in charge, Arthur Jell, has more important things to worry about: schedules to meet and profits to make. Besides, it’s only sugar. How dangerous could it be?
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Further Reading
The key source for this episode was Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (2019) by Stephen Puleo. This episode also drew on various contemporary news reports published between 1914 and 1931 in The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Daily News.
Other sources included:
“Brittle Fracture: The Great Molasses Flood”, Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach, by Stephen Ressler and The Great Courses Plus
The North End: A Brief History of Boston’s Oldest Neighborhood (2009) by Alex R. Goldfeld
Massachusetts Disasters: True Stories of Tragedy and Survival (2018) by Larry Pletcher, with additional stories by David J. Krajicek
“A sticky problem — a new light shone on Boston’s great molasses spillage” by Tony Fishwick, Loss Prevention Bulletin 264, Institute of Chemical Engineers,December 2018.
“Solving a mystery behind a deadly ‘Tsunami of Molasses’ of 1919” by Erin McCann, The New York Times, 26 November 2016.
“Move Fast And Break Things: Pros and Cons of the Concept“, MasterClass, 21 June 2022.
