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Tod’s Mill, looking west
along Commercial
Street, in 1895Leith Fire Brigade, 1890.
Firemaster James Brown
(centre front), led the
emergency response to
the explosion at Tod’sThe heat from the fire was so intense
that it was not possible to stand on
Commercial Street opposite
is all that now remains of the mill,
converted into a block of houses known
as North Leith Mill.
The Tods were well respected around
Leith and were generous benefactors to the
community. They “never ceased to take a
practical, kindly and personal interest in the
welfare of [their] servants“. They ran the
mill in a benevolent manner, having taken
all their employees into a form of co-
partnership for the purposes of profit
sharing. In 1872 they announced a 5%
bonus on wages, raising it to 7.5% in 1873 as
the result of a prosperous year. The workers
further respected that they were practical
men, familiar with their trade having
worked their way up; and they appreciated
their direct manner of dealing with them in
the broad Scots of country boys.
On the fateful evening of January 16th,
1874, around 7.30pm, the alarm was raised
when a fire was discovered in the mill’s
oldest wing. It spread rapidly and had taken
complete hold of that part of the works
within half an hour. Spreading relentlessly,
by 10pm it had entered the third of the
mill’s three wings – circumventing a
fireproof boundary wall by creeping over
the rooftop. By 1am, despite desperate
efforts to contain the spread, the whole of
the main mill block was ablaze from end to
end. The fire reached its height at 2am and it
was not until 6am that it was finally under
control. It was said that Leith was so
brilliantly illuminated “that at almost any
point one could read with ease in the
streets, and the reflection could be seen for
miles around”. People turned out in their
hundreds from Leith and Edinburgh to
gawk at the unfolding calamity. They came
to be thrilled and terrified by the noisy
pyrotechnic display with flames, sparks and
smoke ejected out of the the hundreds of
small windows. Each time a floor collapsed,machinery was sent crashing into the
depths of the blaze below
The entire Leith Fire Brigade (two steam
engines) and much of the Edinburgh Fire
Brigade attended. So intense was the heat
from the fire that it was not possible to
stand on Commercial Street opposite and
the sandstone walls were seen to split and
peel off in large flakes. As the masonry
weakened and the internal structure tying
the building together burnt out or collapsed,
the external walls of the mill began to bow
out dangerously. At 10pm, the top two
storeys of western gable on Couper Street
gave way and collapsed onto the street
below, followed around twenty minutes later
by the entire wall, all 450 feet in length and
four remaining storeys of it. When it
became clear that all was lost with the mill,hopes shifted to stopping it spreading
to nearby tenements, bonded warehouses
and shipping in the Queen’s Dock.
The wind blew sparks and burning
detritus towards these vessels and they
had to be hauled to the eastern end to
keep them from catching fire.
When the flames died down, there was
an awful spectacle to be seen: “those
portions of the walls of both mills that
have not fallen tower, in mid air, reminding
one of the ruins of an old castle, while
below there is a burning mass which still
requires all the efforts of the firemen to
prevent it from breaking out into a fire of
considerable magnitude.”Read the rest of this and other tales
online at: http://www.threadinburgh.scotA contemporary
engraving (left) depicting
an observer’s point of
view from the far side
of the wet docksTod’s Mill (below) after
the explosion