![]() Page from The String of Pearls; or, The Sailor’s Gift, 1850 | |
Author | Unknown but probably James Malcolm Rymer and/or Thomas Peckett Prest |
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Working title | The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance |
Language | English |
Subject | Sweeney Todd |
Genre | Fiction |
Set in | London |
Published | 1846–47 by Edward Lloyd 1850 as a book |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Penny dreadful) |
Pages | 732 pp (Book) |
OCLC | 830944639 |
LC Class | PR5285.R99 |
Text | The String of Pearls at Wikisource |
The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (alternatively titled The Sailor's Gift) is a story first published as a penny dreadful serial from 1846 to 47. The main character of the story is Sweeney Todd, "the Demon Barber of Fleet Street". The story was the character's first literary appearance.
Todd is a barber who murders his customers and gives their corpses to Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime, who bakes their flesh into meat pies. His barber shop is situated in Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan's church, and is connected to Lovett's pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage. Todd kills his victims by pulling a lever while they are in his barber chair, which makes them fall backward through a revolving trapdoor and generally causes them to break their necks or skulls on the cellar floor below. If the victims are still alive, he goes to the basement and "polishes them off" by slitting their throats with his straight razor.
The story is set in London during the year 1785. The plot concerns the strange disappearance of a sailor named Lieutenant Thornhill, last seen entering Sweeney Todd's establishment on Fleet Street. Thornhill was bearing a gift of a string of pearls to a girl named Johanna Oakley on behalf of her missing lover, Mark Ingestrie, who is presumed lost at sea. One of Thornhill's seafaring friends, Colonel Jeffrey, is alerted to the disappearance of Thornhill by his faithful dog, Hector, and investigates his whereabouts. He is joined by Johanna, who wants to know what happened to Mark.
Johanna's suspicions of Sweeney Todd's involvement cause her to dress as a boy and becoming Todd's employee after his last assistant, a young boy named Tobias Ragg, has been incarcerated in a madhouse for accusing Todd of being a murderer. Soon, after Todd has dismembered the corpses of his victims, Mrs. Lovett creates her meat pies from leftover flesh. While the bodies are burning in the oven, a ghastly and intolerable smell reeks from the pie shop chimney. Eventually, the extent of Todd's activities is uncovered when the dismembered remains of hundreds of his victims are discovered in the crypt underneath St. Dunstan's church. Meanwhile, Mark, who has been imprisoned in the cellar beneath the pie shop and made to work as the cook, escapes via the lift used to bring the pies up from the cellar into the pie shop. Here he makes the following startling announcement to the customers of that establishment:
Mrs. Lovett is then poisoned by Sweeney Todd, who is subsequently apprehended and hanged. Johanna marries Mark.
The String of Pearls: A Romance was published in 18 weekly parts, in Edward Lloyd's The People's Periodical and Family Library, issues 7–24, 21 November 1846 to 20 March 1847. It is frequently attributed to Thomas Peckett Prest, but has been more recently been reassigned to James Malcolm Rymer; [2] other names have also been suggested. The story was then published in book form in 1850 as "The String of Pearls", subtitled "The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance". This expanded version of the story was 732 pages long, and its conclusion differs greatly from that of the original serial publication: Todd escapes from prison after being sentenced to death but, after many further adventures, is finally shot dead while fleeing from the authorities. In later years, there were many different literary, stage and eventually movie adaptations which renamed, further expanded and often drastically altered the original story. [1]
A scholarly, annotated edition of The String of Pearls was published in 2007 by the Oxford University Press with the title Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, edited by Robert Mack.
Industrialisation is a theme that contributes to the story. Sweeney Todd owns a barber shop in the middle of one of the busiest industrial parts of the growing city of London. Industrialism resulted in an increasing crime rate, which was exploited by the penny dreadful stories.
While the author of String of Pearls is unknown, there are many theories surrounding its influences. During the 19th century, when this story was first written, a semi-common trade was what was termed a barber-surgeon. Barber-surgeons were medical practitioners trained not by schooling but by apprenticeship, and they were sometimes illiterate. Surgery eventually became an established profession of its own and the two were separated legally by King George II in Britain during 1745. [3]
The 1612 French historical nonfiction book Le Théâtre des Antiquités de Paris by Father Jacques du Breul contains a section titled De la maison des Marmousets (From the house of the Marmousets) that mentions a "murderous pastry cook" who incorporates into his pie the meat of a man he murdered due to its alleged dietary benefits. [4]
It has been speculated that, "Joseph Fouché, who served as Minister of Police in Paris from 1799 to 1815, had records in the archives of police that explored murders committed in the 1800s by a Parisian barber". [5] Fouché mentioned that the barber was in league with "a neighbouring pastry cook, who made pies out of the victims and sold them for human consumption". [5] There is question about the authenticity of this account, "yet the tale was republished in 1824 under the headline A Terrific Story of the Rue de Le Harpe, Paris in The Tell Tale, a London magazine. Perhaps Thomas Prest, scouring publications for ideas, read about the Paris case and stored it away for later use." [5]
Sweeney Todd's story also appears in The Newgate Calendar , originally a bulletin of executions produced by the keeper of Newgate Prison, the title of which was appropriated by chapbooks, popular pamphlets full of entertaining, often violent criminal activities. [6] Despite this, there is no mention of Todd's trial or execution in official records, and thus no real evidence that he ever existed. [6]
No public records prove any existence of a London barber by the name of Sweeney during the 18th century or of a barber shop located on Fleet Street. There were many word-of-mouth, true crime and horror stories at the time however, reported in "The Old Bailey" section of the Times of London as well as other daily newspapers. News also commonly travelled by word of mouth as the majority of the population was still illiterate, and could become embellished in the retelling from person to person. Such news might still be assumed factual because there was no way of proving otherwise at the time. [7]
In Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers (1836–37), Pickwick's cockney servant Sam Weller states that a pieman used cats "for beefsteak, veal and kidney, 'cording to the demand", and recommends that people should buy pies only "when you know the lady as made it, and is quite sure it ain't kitten". [8] Dickens expanded on the idea of using non-traditional sources for meat pie in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44). This was published two years before The String of Pearls (1846–47) and included a character by the name of Tom Pinch, who feels lucky that his own "evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many country legends as doing a lively retail business in the metropolis" and worries that John Westlock will "begin to be afraid that I have strayed into one of those streets where the countrymen are murdered; and that I have been made into meat pies, or some such horrible thing". [9] [10] Peter Haining suggested in a 1993 book that Dickens was inspired by knowledge of the "real" Sweeney Todd, but that he chose not to mention him, in case some of his victims' relatives were still alive. [6]
Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the villain of the penny dreadful serial The String of Pearls (1846–1847). The original tale became a feature of 19th-century melodrama and London legend. A barber from Fleet Street, Todd murders his customers with a straight razor and gives their corpses to Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime, who bakes their flesh into meat pies. The tale has been retold many times since in various media.
Fleet Street is a street in Central London, England. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary of the Cities of London and Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was named.
Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the 19th century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typically referred to a story published in weekly parts of 8 to 16 pages, each costing one penny. The subject matter of these stories was typically sensational, focusing on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. First published in the 1830s, penny dreadfuls featured characters such as Sweeney Todd, Dick Turpin, Varney the Vampire, and Spring-heeled Jack.
The Guild Church of St Dunstan-in-the-West is in Fleet Street in the City of London. It is dedicated to Dunstan, Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury. The church is of medieval origin, although the present building, with an octagonal nave, was constructed in the 1830s to the designs of John Shaw.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1979 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. It is based on the 1970 play Sweeney Todd by Christopher Bond. The character of Sweeney Todd first appeared in a Victorian penny dreadful titled The String of Pearls.
Thomas PeckettPrest was a British hack writer, journalist, and musician. He was a prolific producer of penny dreadfuls and was known as a skilled author in the horror genre. He is now remembered as the co-creator of the fictional Sweeney Todd, the 'demon barber' immortalized in his The String of Pearls, as well as the co-author with Rymer of Varney the Vampire. He wrote under pseudonyms including Bos, a takeoff of Charles Dickens' own pen name, Boz. He also was noted to have a style similar to Dickens. Before joining Edward Lloyd's publishing factory, Prest had made a name for himself as a talented musician.
Tobias Ragg is a fictional character who appears in various adaptations of the story Sweeney Todd. The character is an apprentice to the abusive barber Pirelli until Pirelli is murdered by Todd. Toby proceeds to stay with Todd and Mrs. Lovett, helping the latter out in her meat pie shop. Later, Tobias discovers that they have a joint venture to cook the men Todd shaves into meat pies. He ultimately kills Todd after Todd kills Lovett and Lucy Barker, along with multiple others.
The rue de la Harpe is a street in Paris' Latin Quarter. Relatively calm and cobblestoned along much of its length, it runs in a south-easterly direction between the rue de la Huchette and the rue Saint-Séverin, where it turns south-west to where it ends at the boulevard Saint-Germain. It is a largely residential street; it is graced through its odd numbers with a few buildings dating from the Louis XV period, but buildings along the opposite side of the street are most all of a 'Haussmannian' style of a more recent stature. Its street-front commerces are varied to its southern end, but tend towards restaurants and the tourism trade towards the river. It appeared in the 19th century magazine, The Tell Tale, as the site of the murders which may have been the origin of the Sweeney Todd story.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 2007 musical slasher film directed by Tim Burton from a screenplay by John Logan, based on the stage musical of the same name by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, which in turn is based on the 1970 play Sweeney Todd by Christopher Bond. The film retells the melodramatic Victorian tale of Sweeney Todd, an English barber and serial killer who, while seeking revenge on Judge Turpin who wrongfully convicted and exiled him to steal his wife, murders his customers and, with the help of his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, processes their corpses into meat pies.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British drama film produced and directed by George King, and written by Frederick Hayward, H. F. Maltby, and George Dibdin-Pitt. The film features actor Tod Slaughter as the barber Sweeney Todd.
Mrs. Lovett is a fictional character appearing in many adaptations of the story Sweeney Todd. Her first name is most commonly referred to as Nellie, although she has also been referred to as Amelia, Margery, Maggie, Sarah, Shirley, Wilhelmina, Mary and Claudetta. A baker from London, Mrs. Lovett is an accomplice and business partner of Sweeney Todd, a barber and serial killer from Fleet Street. She makes meat pies from Todd’s victims.
The Tale of Sweeney Todd is a 1997 American crime-drama/horror television film directed by John Schlesinger and starring Ben Kingsley and Joanna Lumley. The teleplay by Peter Buckman was adapted from a story by Peter Shaw. It was broadcast in the United States by Showtime on April 19, 1998, and released on videotape in France the following month. It later was released as a feature film in select foreign markets.
Bloodthirsty Butchers is a 1970 horror film directed by Andy Milligan and starring Michael Cox, Linda Driver, Jane Helay, and Bernard Kaler. It is an adaptation of the notorious story of Sweeney Todd. The film was released as a double feature with Torture Dungeon.
Johanna is a fictional character appearing in the story of Sweeney Todd. In the original version of the tale, the penny dreadful The String of Pearls (1846–7), her name is Johanna Oakley and she is no relation of Todd. In the popular musical adaptation by Stephen Sondheim, inspired by Christopher Bond's play Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1973), she is the daughter of Benjamin Barker and his wife, Lucy. In this version she is the ward of Judge Turpin, the man who falsely convicted her father and raped her mother.
Lucy Barker is a fictional character that appears in some versions of the story Sweeney Todd. Lucy is the wife of barber Benjamin Barker, who is unjustly imprisoned by Judge Turpin, who wants Lucy for himself. After Turpin sexually abuses her, Lucy attempts suicide with poison, but survives and goes insane. Years later, Benjamin Barker, now calling himself "Sweeney Todd", returns to London and his neighbor, Mrs. Lovett tells Todd about Lucy poisoning herself, but leaves out that Lucy lived. He later finds Lucy as a beggar woman; not recognizing her, he slits her throat, before killing Mrs. Lovett.
Judge Turpin is a fictional character in Christopher Bond's 1973 play of the story of Sweeney Todd, as well as later adaptations. He is the main antagonist, a cruel and corrupt judge who imprisons Benjamin Barker on false charges, rapes Barker's wife Lucy, and takes Barker's daughter Johanna in as his ward.
Mr. Adolfo Pirelli, also known as Alf Spiral, Daniel O'Higgins or Davy Collins, is a fictional character from Stephen Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He is a supporting antagonist in the story and a rival barber to Sweeney Todd. He is eventually killed by Todd after he threatens him with extortion.
Sweeney Todd is a 1928 British silent crime film directed by Walter West and starring Moore Marriott, Judd Green and Iris Darbyshire. It was adapted from a popular 1847 stage play by George Dibdin-Pitt called The String of Pearls, or The Fiend of Fleet Street, which in turn was based on an anonymous story called The String of Pearls: A Romance that was serialized in magazine format in 1846. This was the first time the story was adapted into a play, and it featured a surprise twist ending that doesn't appear in later stage versions of the Sweeney Todd legend. It was filmed entirely on set at Islington Studios.
George Dibdin Pitt was an English actor, stage manager and prolific playwright, specializing in melodrama. He was the first playwright to dramatize the fictional character Sweeney Todd, in his 1847 play The String of Pearls; or, The Fiend of Fleet Street. The character was originally created by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest and had first appeared in a penny dreadful serial titled The String of Pearls.
"Not While I'm Around" is a song from the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It is a duet between Tobias Ragg and Mrs. Lovett that first appeared on Broadway in 1979. A screen adaptation for the 2007 film of the same name features Edward Sanders as Tobias and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett. In the 2023 revival, it is sung by Gaten Matarazzo and Annaleigh Ashford. Josh Groban, who played the barber in the 2023 production, has also released his own version.