Poisoned pints in Halifax 1902

Arsenical beer poisoning was a nationwide scandal in 1900. It was such a scandal that a year later Halifax brewers were proudly proclaiming when they’d had tests done to confirm their beer was safe to drink. And quite rightly too. Except another spate of poisonings was about to occur, and this time, some of those breweries who’d trumpeted the purity of their product would be in the spotlight. So before you pour yourself a pint read on and find out why it’s a lot safer for you to do this today than it was 121 years ago…

In the latter half of 1900 there was a sudden outbreak of deaths and illnesses across the north, mainly Manchester and Liverpool, with a single thread tying them all together: the love of a pint. The initial blame was laid on the way malt was baked in the kilns prior to brewing. Coal or coke was used to fire the kilns and this meant that arsenic on the malt couldn’t be avoided. It rarely was found at serious levels though, so how could this be? Further investigation by a Royal Enquiry which was set up in 1901 pinpointed the real enemy, though: brewing sugars produced by a single firm, Bostock’s. How deadly were these sugars? In the last six months of 1900 the death toll from arsenic poisoning linked to ale stood at 70, with a further 6,000 injured in some way! Fatalities and illnesses ranged all the way over into Bacup. Bostock’s had to liquidate under the weight of lawsuits from breweries and individuals alike, new ways of testing the arsenic content of beer were introduced into the public health domain, and as you can see from this advertisement in the Halifax Evening Courier from December 1900, breweries were keen to advertise the safety of their products.

But just when you thought it was safe to step into the pub, Halifax would suffer its own mini-epidemic of arsenical beer, also with fatal results.

On January 8th 1902 the first victim, William McNulty, died from the effects of chronic arsenic poisoning, and as everyone knew what to look for, the doctors who had been treating him for the last four days had already looked into his drinking habits. When carter Thomas Lee died a month later, on February 5th, they were certain that there must be a problem. Despite some disagreement amongst coroners about the source of Lee’s arsenic levels it quickly became evident that there was a problem, and doctors in the district began to remember cases that predated these where the patients hadn’t died but had instead been successfully treated (or at least kept from death’s door). There were ten such cases which begs the question why no one had been looking into this sort of thing sooner, but there you go.

Halifax Guardian, January 11th 1902

Dr. James Neech’s enquiry into the deaths of McNulty and Lee, as well as the other ten injured people, is an enjoyable read. It might seem odd to call it such a thing, but Neech lays out his process of elimination in determining which breweries might have been supplying contaminated malt-based alcohol. Beginning when McNulty’s arsenic poisoning was discovered – and before his death, even – Neech had begun to interview the ten previous patients about their drinking habits and onset of symptoms. Each patient told of where they had been buying beer and he was able to work out which breweries had been supplying those public houses. Those breweries were required to give samples immediately which were tested, and more samples from the bottom of casks, filtered (from the middle), and dregs were tested over time to gain a true understanding of the scale of contamination. The result was that results varied (typical) but “Brewer K” – anonymised for their own safety! – seems to have come out the worst, with a large number of samples found to have dangerous amounts of arsenic present even in the filtered samples where the sediment was least concentrated.

So how did it happen? What happened is really quite frustrating. The most-contamined samples have been brewed from malt supplied by a malster (anonymised as A.F.B.) who, it turns out, had had a consignment returned from a brewery in Lancashire for a high arsenical content; because that brewery refused to pay or provide proof that their own processes weren’t at fault, A.F.B. sold the malt onwards again to Brewer K. It also ended up being proven that some newer malt they sold to Brewer K was also high in arsenic, and this time rather than the brewing sugars it was clear that the processes A.F.B. used in their malt kiln was to blame.

What is left out of Neech’s official report is hinted at, not so subtly at times, in coverage of his initial enquiry by the Halifax Comet on February 15th 1902. Their coverage is fascinating in that it is very heavily weighted in favour of the breweries. The Comet was a semi-satirical newspaper which functioned more as a personal newsletter for town Alderman Joe Turner Spencer and his bias is clear when he writes that

Spencer mocks the experts. Halifax Comet, February 15th 1902

The fact that most of the Comet’s advertisers were the same local breweries who were investigated by Neech later is, of course, almost certainly a coincidence. When we read his coverage now, the only point on which he was almost certainly correct is his assertion that McNulty’s death was hastened by living rough and poverty, and that if as many people had shown concern for his health while he was still alive as they did now he was dead that maybe he’d still be alive.

Whether Spencer was embarrassed by subsequent findings proving that it was, in fact, the beer that poisoned these twelve people, is left uncommented on in later issues of the Comet. But it’s true that breweries were up in arms initially due to the fear of a drop in trade or lawsuits, and a piece by Peter Dyer in the Journal of the Brewery History Society on arsenical beer mentions that a brewer even paid a visit to the coroner prior to one of the inquests, we guess to have a hard word or two about these expensive rumours. Was it Brewer K? For the sake of a good story we hope it was. But the record here also remains silent.

Meanwhile the Royal Commission into arsenical beer had been continuing to interview and make recommendations, and their final result was to recommend that penalties be imposed when beer was tested and found to have more than 1/100th of a grain or more was found in a gallon of beer. For reference, the worst filtered sample from Brewer K contained 1/16th a grain per gallon. Yikes.

Was this the end of drinking drama in Halifax? Of course it wasn’t. And if you’re thinking that perhaps it was safer to stick to water in these arsenical times then you’d be incorrect. Because there was more trouble brewing in the area: specifically lead poisoning. Groundwater in this part of Calderdale came from especially peaty areas, which caused it to be acidic, which caused it to eat away at the tin lining of lead pipes faster and contributed to a series of health problems in Shelf in March 1902, which was further grist for the Halifax Comet’s mill of anti-Neech propaganda. It had already been found before now that a high iron content in water would counteract the carbonate of lime which was added to reservoirs to help prevent lead leeching into drinking water, and depending on where the water was drawn from iron content could vary wildly even from the same source. Pamphleteers and journalists would subsequently highlight this issue again and again, but the water board were slow to respond outside of sourcing and fixing the causes of individual instances of clear signs of “plumbism” in the district.

Halifax Guardian, March 8th 1902

It took until 1928 for the scale of lead in drinking water to be addressed fully, as well as for other testing to be introduced for bacteria. Perhaps you’d be better off with a glass of wine with dinner tonight…