Only in Boston by Duncan J.D. Smith

31 North End In the aftermath, over 300 people were involved in the cleanup, with salt water from a fireboat used to wash the worst of the molas- ses away. Those families affected brought one of the first class-action lawsuits in Massachusetts against the United States Industrial Alcohol Company (USIA), which had bought Purity Distilling in 1917. In spite of the company’s attempts to claim the tank had been blown up by anarchists or Italian fascists, the court found them guilty. As a result, the relatives of those who died were paid $7,000 per victim. Structural defects in the tank combined with climatic conditions were the reasons cited for the disaster. The steel used in the tank’s con- struction was found to be too thin and lacking in manganese, which made it brittle. A fatigue crack at the base of the tank was probably the trigger, exploited when pressure in the tank increased due to an unseasonably rapid rise in air temperature. In a twist to the story, it was later claimed that the USIA had filled the tank to the maximum to outrun prohibition, which was ratified by means of the Eighteenth Amendment just one day after the disaster. One of those who perished in the disaster was wagon-driver Ralph Martin. A concrete model of his home forms part of an unusual model village created in 2006 at Forest Hills Cemetery (Jamaica Plain) (see no. 91). The owner of each model house is buried in the cemetery. Other locations nearby: 11, 12, 13, 14 The Great Boston Molasses Flood was headline news