A river of whiskey and manure

A true story of the Great Whiskey fire in the Liberties.

The June sun was setting when John McGrane heard the news at the corner of Bow Street. He and William Smith, still dusty from their day's labor, watched as people rushed past, speaking of a great fire at Malone’s in the Liberties. The sky to the south was already taking on an unnatural glow.

The Liberties of Dublin in 1875 stood as a city within a city, a maze of narrow lanes and cramped passages that had grown up outside the old medieval walls. Its name came from the medieval practice of granting certain areas "liberty" from the city's governance, though by 1875 this was more memory than reality. The district sprawled southwest of Christ Church Cathedral, bound roughly by the River Liffey to the north, St. Patrick's Cathedral to the east, and stretching out toward Kilmainham to the west. The lads knew those streets well, having grown up there together, outside Dublin's city walls.

Here, the industrial heart of Dublin beat strongest. The air was thick with the smells of the trades that dominated the area - the sweet fermented scent of hops and barley from the many distilleries and breweries, the sharp tang of leather from the tanneries, and the acrid smoke from countless chimney stacks.

The streets themselves told the story of commerce: Thomas Street and Meath Street hosted bustling markets where traders sold everything from fresh meat to second-hand clothes. The infamous "bird market" on Patrick Street filled the air with the sound of caged songbirds, while horses and carts clattered constantly over the cobblestones, hauling goods between the warehouses and markets. Malone's bonded warehouse on Chamber Street was just one of many such establishments, its walls housing thousands of gallons of spirits under bond for the surrounding distilleries.

The Liberties was a rough place, but it was home - a maze of tenements where people lived alongside their animals, pigs and horses sharing the cramped spaces with families, all of them struggling to survive.

William, who had always been one to chase excitement, grabbed McGrane's sleeve. "We should have a look," he said, his young face bright with curiosity. It was nearly ten o'clock when they set out -- a decision that would haunt McGrane until his dying day.

The first warning came on the wind -- a sickly-sweet perfume of burning spirits that made their eyes water. As they crossed the river toward the Coombe, the stench grew worse, mixing with the acrid fumes of a burning tannery where vats of urine used for treating leather had begun to boil. Through the smoky haze, they witnessed a sight that seemed torn from a fever dream: a pig racing past them, its back blazing with blue alcohol flames, its owner giving desperate chase.

Chamber Street opened before them like the mouth of hell itself. The heat struck them first, a wall of scorching air that drove them back a step. Malone's warehouse, the great storehouse of Dublin's spirits, had become a furnace. Within its walls lay thousands of gallons of whiskey and brandy, each barrel a bomb waiting to burst. The inferno reached higher than the buildings themselves, accompanied by an ungodly chorus -- the screaming of trapped animals, the explosion of barrels, and the deep roar of the fire itself.

What flowed down those streets wasn't water. It was whiskey -- burning whiskey, a river of flame two feet wide and six inches deep. The liquid was already a devil's brew, mixing with the filth of Dublin's gutters -- manure from the streets, water from the firemen's hoses, and whatever else lurked in the Liberties' sewers. The sight drew crowds like moths to a flame, and McGrane and William, who should have run, found themselves moving closer instead, caught in the strange spell of the moment.

They came upon a house on Chamber Street where a wake was being held. Mourners stumbled out into the street, some clutching rosary beads, others struggling with chairs and wake provisions. An old woman's keening rose above the din: "We can't leave him! We can't leave the dead!"

"Give us a hand here, lads!" The shout came from two men struggling with a coffin. Before McGrane could think, he and William were helping to carry the dead through the living hell, the heat so fierce it nearly took their eyebrows. The dead person's family hurried alongside, trying to maintain some dignity in their grief as the fire crept closer. Several streets away, they set their burden down, the mourners gathering around like lost sheep, their prayers mixing with the sounds of destruction.

The streets had descended into pandemonium. Horses and pigs ran wild with terror while families fled the tenements with whatever they could carry. A mad dog, driven frenzied by the heat and fumes, tore through the crowds before leaping to its death from a window on Dominick Street. The Carmelite nuns' prayers rose in desperation as the fire approached their convent. A change in wind saved them, only to drive the fire into the poorhouses nearby.

Captain Ingram of the Dublin Fire Brigade was already at work. He'd earned his reputation fighting fires in New York, and was known for unconventional solutions -- like the time he'd had the Royal Navy sink a burning ship in Dublin Bay. Now he faced his greatest challenge. Water only made the burning whiskey spread faster, floating on top like oil. The fire was consuming the Liberties, the immediate concern was survival.

When his first solution of sand and gravel failed to stem the tide of burning spirits, Ingram had an inspiration born of Dublin's streets. The city's horse-drawn traffic left mountains of manure, which the corporation collected daily and stored in depots around town. Ingram ordered every available cart of it brought to the Liberties. As each load arrived, soldiers built dams of dung across the streets. Where the burning whiskey met the damp manure, the flames finally began to die.

But for some, the real danger was just beginning. People were gathering anything they could find to scoop up the whiskey. McGrane found a jug somewhere -- he could never later recall where it came from -- while William fell to his knees beside the stream. "Free whiskey!" someone shouted, and reason fled. Despite the efforts of soldiers and firemen, people ducked around their barriers, filling boots, pots, anything that would hold liquid.

William drank desperately from his cupped hands, there near the Coombe. McGrane told him to slow down, but his friend seemed possessed. All around them, people were drinking from pots, pans, boots -- even their own hands. Nobody seemed to care about the filth they were consuming along with the spirits.

William wasn't satisfied with just his hands. He found a small rill of alcohol coming from the latest barrier erected by the firemen on the streets. Snatching off his hat, he used it to gather the drink, consuming it as quickly as he could to keep up with the flow. Even as shit accumulated in the oily pool within his hat, he kept drinking, resorting to it between scooping with his hands.

Then it happened. William collapsed, falling like a felled tree. Two strangers rushed to help as McGrane explained that William lived nearby and begged for help to carry him. William was breathing but insensible to all communication. When they got to Meath Street, the O'Rourkes from down the road, took over to get Willie home to his bed. They got him home just before midnight, but his breathing had gone strange, and he wouldn't properly wake.

The next morning, they took him to Richmond Hospital. The ward was already filling with others who had drunk from the burning river - one man struck blind, another retching continuously into a bucket. William was the worst of them, still insensible to the world around him. The doctors administered their medicines, tried to get water into him when they could. For a moment, when he opened his eyes, there was hope. But by Sunday night, William Smith was dead, his last hours spent bringing up blood and mumbling delirious promises never to drink again. Twenty-one years old, and killed not by flames or smoke, but by drinking that devil's mixture.

Thirteen others would die the same way. Not from the fire itself -- from drinking the whiskey that flowed through Dublin's streets that night. McGrane had taken only what his jug would hold, but William... William had drunk as if it were water, as if it were his last chance at something precious.

In the years that followed, McGrane's dreams were haunted by that night -- the rivers of fire, the screaming of trapped animals, the mad dog's final leap. But most often, he dreamed of that coffin they'd carried through the chaos, and how even the dead had to flee the burning rivers.

He would see William fall, over and over, and wake wondering if he could have stopped him. But there had been something in the air that night, something that made men lose their reason. In public comments, the Lord Mayor of Dublin would later call it a tendency to "indulge immoderately in drink," but he hadn't been there. He hadn't seen how that river of fire called to people, hadn't heard how it whispered of warmth and forgetfulness.

McGrane survived that night, but he would never forget the sight of that burning river flowing through their streets, or the price his friend paid for his share of it.