Historian Andy Arthur looks back at the devastating blaze at Tod’s Mill

which almost razed it to the ground and brought hundreds of city

residents onto the street to gawp at the unfolding rescue mission

of

The

12 FEATURE TOD’S MILL

O

n January 16th 1874 a

calamitous fire

engulfed the largest

and most modern flour

mill in Scotland, almost

completely destroying

it. £168,000 worth of

damage was caused, split roughly equally

between the loss of the mill itself and its

stocks of grain and flour; around £24.

million in 2023.

This mill was Tod’s Mill – otherwise

known by its formal name, the Leith Flour

Mills – and its proprietors were A. & R. Tod.

A. & R. Tod were the brothers Alexander

(1811-1888) and Robert (1826-1897) Tod,

the sons of Marion Gray and James Tod.

James was the village baker in Ormiston,

East Lothian, and his position required him

to deal in grain. He left the bakery behind to

pursue grain dealing, in which he

prospered. The family were thus able to

ensure each of their eleven children received

a good start in life. Their sons were all well

educated and found good positions as

apprentices. Alexander – and later his

younger brother Robert – were apprenticed

to bakers in Edinburgh, and they followed

their father and went into partnership as

grain merchants. The census of 1851 records

them as living in a fashionable Edinburgh

townhouse at 14 Leopold Place with their

parents. Alexander and his father were

Master corn merchants and young Robert

was a Journeyman. Having established

themselves in that trade, in the mid 1850s

they took the lease on the water-powered

Stockbridge Flour Mill on Baker’s Place. The

business grew rapidly, the Tod’s earning a

reputation for the best quality of baker’s

flour and soon outgrew the confined

premises at Stockbridge. So it was in 1859

that construction began of a large, new,

steam-powered mill, by the wet docks on

Commercial Street in Leith which was

completed by the end of that year.

On account of the unsuitable nature of

native wheat, Scottish bakers baked with

flour milled from imported foreign grain,

traditionally from Europe but increasingly

from Australia and Canada. With its

expansive new docks and railway

connections Leith – not traditionally a

milling town – was therefore an eminently

sensible place for a mill, and would come to

equal Glasgow as a centre for Scottish

milling. The Tod’s new works cost £33,

• about £4.7million in today’s money – and
  had 27 pairs of grinding stones in operation.
  They were expanded upon only a few years
  later in 1861 at a cost of £50,000 (around
  £7.6 million). Demand could still not be
  met, and in 1869 a third extension was
  added at a cost of £12,000 (£1.8million).
  In this final phase of development the
  mill operated a total of more than 100
  pairs of grinding stones, employing three
  shifts, each one comprising around 300
  men and boys.
  The operation ran day and night,
  stopping only on Sundays, grinding 7,
  quarters (quarters of a hundredweight, or
  28lbs, or 95.2 metric tonnes) of wheat a
  week, producing 8,000 bakers sacks of flour.
  The mill rose to seven storeys tall on
  Commercial Street and its 180 foot tall
  chimney was double that height,
  dominating the locality.
  The story of the Tod brothers is one of

Robert Tod

in later life, from

newspaper clipping

The Tod family ran the mill in a benevolent

manner, taking their employees into a form of

co-partnership for the purpose of profit sharing

restless and relentless modernisation and

expansion. They constantly sought out the

latest new technology for their mill. In 1869,

a new granary building was added on the

junction of Prince Regent Street and Couper

Street. This six-storey building had a floor

area of 14,000 square feet and had six cart

entrances, arranged in a “drive through”

manner so that carts could load or unload

under cover without having to back up or

turn back on themselves.This latter building