On Saturday 14th April, 1832, The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette reported:
"A man, named Bragg, a servant of Mr. Richards, of the Turk's Head Inn in this city, on Monday morning last, accidentally slipped into the mashing-kieve which was then filled with the second run of wort. The lower parts of his body only were immersed in the liquid, and he fortunately extricated himself, when the brewer came to his assistance, and having stripped him, made an instant application of yeast to the scalded parts, The man was afterward removed to the Devon and Exeter Hospital, where he now remains in a fair way of recovery,"
The Turk's Head Inn still stands next to Exeter's Guildhall. I like to imagine this accident happening in the yard behind, where now the shopping-centre buzzes. A kieve is a tub, here big enough for poor Bragg to slip into. It was full of boiling-hot wort, wort being a mash of barley and malt and perhaps other grain.
The very thought of being scalded in my lower parts makes me feel tolerant, for once, towards today's health and safety regulators.
I wonder if the resourceful, yeast-applying brewer went on to sell his brew to the Turk's Head's or elsewhere. I suppose he did. Maybe he called it Bragg's Brew; - maybe not!
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