It was a well-written story. For its time and the suspense was well-contained. To the unsuspecting reader, confirmations of their suspicions must have come as a complete shock. As far as we know, no-one attacked the publishers because the story was likely to drive unbalanced persons to practice cannibalism.
Two years later a stage version of Sweeney Todd by George Dibdin Pitt was produced by the Britannia Saloon in Hoxton, Greater London. The theme was readily adaptable for the theater. Indeed stage carpenters over the next hundred years have been busy manufacturing disappearing chairs.
The play became so popular that in Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit, (1843), Tom Pinch was made to express the hope that, because he had stayed out late no-one would presume that he ''was murdered and made into meat pies''. In 1846 the story was printed yet again by Lloyd in People's Periodical and Family Library, a weekly magazine that contained amongst other things, articles with titles Confessions of a Deformed Lunatic or The Madhouse of Palermo.
The String of Pearls set a pattern for the all the Sweeney Todd stories yet to come. There was usually a frightened boy who worked as an assistant. Todd used to send him out of the shop on an errand when a likely customer would arrive. The chair was dropped by pulling a bolt or handle in the back-room. Victims were usually strangers to the town, wealthy people who boasted of their fortunes, sailors back from long voyages. The owner of the pie-shop was generally a woman and the actual pie-maker some groveling person incarcerated in the basement. To arouse the suspicions of both reader and assistant a hat would be found hanging in the shop or a dog would be sitting outside the shop, howling. A curious twist in Prest's version was that while a newly bereaved widow showed no instinctive dislike of a pie containing portions of her late spouse, the dog turned 'with loathing' from the bits of pie thrown to him.
The grim double entendre, a feature of Prest's narrative,was copied, and not always as successfully by those who later took over the torch. The barber would assure his customers that there was not a shop in London which could polish off a customer as quickly as he or, he would advise a waiting customer to go round the corner to watch the animated clock of St. Dunstan's striking the hour 'while I finish this gentleman'. Once, he removed himself from a tedious discussion by saying 'I have another subject to dissect'. Not always was the double-talk a deliberate jest by the speaker. When the boy Tobias, having newly applied for the job, was advised not to 'repeat a word of what passes in this shop, or dare to make any supposition, or draw any conclusion from anything you see or hear,' he replied: ' Yes, sir, I won't say anything. I wish, sir, as I may be made into veal pies at Lovett's in Bell Yard if I as much as says a word.' It was not surprising that Sweeney Todd glared at him silently for a moment or two in silence. On another occasion an apprentice eating one of Mrs. Lovett's pies exclaimed to his friend, 'Lord bless ye, I'd eat my mother if she was a pork chop!'.
The artist who illustrated The String of Pearls in the People's Periodical hardly did justice to the author's description:
The barber himself was a long low-jointed, ill-put-together sort of fellow, with an immense mouth, and such huge hands and feet that he was, in his way, quite a natural curiosity; and what was more wonderful considering his trade, there never was such a head of hair as Sweeney Todd's. We know not what to compare it to; probably it came close to what one may suppose to be the appearance of a thick-set hedge in which a quantity of small wire had got entangled. In truth it was a most terrific head of hair; and as Sweeney Todd kept all his combs in it- some people said his scissors likewise- when he put his head out of the shop door to see what sort of weather it was he might have been mistaken for some Indian warrior with a very remarkable head-dress
Later it appeared that he 'squinted a little to add to his charms,' and his short, hyena-like laugh (described as 'cachinnatory effusion') was such that 'people had been known to look up the ceiling, then on the floor and all around them, to know from whence it had come, scarcely supposing it possible that it proceeded from mortal lips.'
Prest never lost an opportunity of discoursing on the merits of Mrs. Lovett's pies. The arrival of each fresh batch from the bake-house was the signal for a near-riot in Bell's Yard. Lawyers and their clerks and apprentices were her principal customers.
And well did they deserve their reputation, those delicious pies! There was about them a flavor never surpassed and rarely equaled; the paste was of the most delicate construction and impregnated with the aroma of delicious gravy that defied description. Then the small portions of meat which they contained were so tender, and the fat and lean so artistically mixed up that to eat one of Lovett's pies was such a provocative to eat another that many persons who came to lunch stayed to dine, wasting more than an hour perhaps of precious time and endangering (who knows to the contrary?) the success of some law-suit nearby.
Although he had been promised that his throat would be slit from ear to ear if he did not mind his own business, the boy Tobias could not help noticing curious incidents. It was strange that a customer should depart and forget his hat, and not return for it. Then there was the mystery of why the barber's chair was so securely screwed to the floor. One day Tobias broke into Sweeney Todd's private apartments. There he found a large number of walking-sticks, more than a hundred umbrellas, a collection of swords and several pairs of shoes and finally, a large desk stuffed with jewellery. His unlawful entry was detected; but instead of cutting the boy's throat, the barber decided to have him shut away in the madhouse at Peckham Rye, confident that if the lad began to voice his suspicions of what had been going on in the barber's shop his statements would be accepted as proof of his insanity. The madhouse keeper was an understanding fellow who knew that Sweeney Todd would not want to bear indefinitely the cost of Tobias' incarceration. A previous lad whom Todd had committed to his care for a year had died conveniently at the end of the paid-up period.
Now, the author found something else on which to let his fancy roam:
About this time and while these incidents of our most strange and eventful narrative were taking place, the pious frequenters of old St. Dunstan's began to perceive a strange and most abominable odor throughout the sacred edifice.
It was in vain that old women who came to hear sermons, although they were to deaf to catch a third part of them, brought smelling bottles and other means of stifling their noses; still the dreadful charnel-house sort of smell would make itself most painfully and most disagreeably apparent.
The beadle, whose function it was to cuff small boys who dared to look at the bishop, began to go about with a key in one hand and a vinegar cloth in the other, as was the fashion during the Great Plague. When the bishop would arrive to take confirmation classes, he was so overwhelmed by the odor, that 'the people found themselves confirmed almost before they knew where they were'. The bishop would then stalk out to his carriage, ignoring the cold collation which had been set out for him (and which for once, did not contain any of Mrs. Lovett's pies). At this stage the Church authorities decided a little belatedly to explore their mephitic vaults so as to trace the nuisance. It could not have been caused by the corpses in their racks, they decided, because these had been dead too long to vex the atmosphere.
Meanwhile an anxious pie-man was becoming dissatisfied with his situation in Mrs. Lovett's subterranean bake-house. It seemed like a good job at first- he was allowed to eat unlimited quantities of pies, on which he gluttoned. But he was not permitted to leave the underground chamber. He even had to sleep there; and as he slept, a fresh supply of meat would arrive on the shelves at the other end of the room, ready for the next day's baking.
This mysterious arrival of the meat puzzled the pie-man. He began to search the far end of the vault. Lightly penciled on the wall was this disturbing message:
Whatever unhappy wretch reads these lines may bid adieu to the world and all hope, for he is a doomed man! He will never emerge from these vaults with life, for there is a secret connected with them so awful and so hideous that to write it makes one's blood curdle and the flesh to creep upon your bones. The secret is this- and you may be assured whoever is reading these lines, that I write the truth, and that it is impossible to make the awful truth worse by exaggeration, as it would be by a candle at midday to attempt to add any luster to the sunbeams.
If the unknown author had thought less of his literary style and more of his duty to society he might have been better able to get his message across. As it was the communiqué broke off at the word 'sunbeams' with an ominous scrawl, which suggested that the author had been forcibly interrupted. While pondering the possible implications of this warning, the pie-man noticed a clean sheet of paper on the floor. It bore a written message:
You are getting dissatisfied, and therefore it becomes necessary to explain to you your real position, which is simply this: you are a prisoner and were such from the first moment you set foot where you now are...it is sufficient to inform you that so long as you continue to make pies you will be safe, but if you refuse, then the first time you are caught sleeping your throat will be cut
Then as if to drive the message right home, the trap door in the roof opened and Sweeney Todd's evil face appeared.
`Make pies,' advised Todd. `Eat them and be happy. How many a man would envy your position-- withdrawn from the struggles of existence, amply provided with board and lodging, and engaged in a pleasant and delightful occupation; it is amazing how you can be dissatisfied.'
But not all these warnings could keep the prisoner from trying to find out where the supplies of meat came from. With the aid of an iron bar he forced the hidden communicating hatch at the end of the vault and stepped through, bearing a torch. There, he found his answer.
With a cry of horror he fell backwards, extinguishing the torch in his fall, and he lay for fully a quarter of an hour insensible on the floor. What dreadful sight had he seen that so chilled his young blood and frozen up the springs of life?
By now, Sweeney Todd, who had spent much of his time in slaying and dissecting in trying to sell his victims' property, had made enough money to retire. He was preparing to poison Mrs. Lovett as that she would be in no position to betray him. But the net was closing in.
In reply to the notice Todd had put in his window after Tobias' departure--`Wanted, a lad; one of strong religious preferred. Apply within'-- he received an application from a strikingly good-looking youth, whom he engaged. This was Johanna, the heroine of the story, who had volunteered to play an undercover role in an endeavor to find out what had happened to her seafaring lover, missing after a visit Sweeney Todd's. Two gentlemen of the town had also undertaken to visit Todd's shop as customers.
These were exciting hours for Johanna--and for the reader. One thing which gave Johanna food for thought was that a gash in the arm of the chair caused by here carelessness with a razor, had vanished completely only a few minutes after her return to the shop.
The dénouement was as exciting as could have been hoped. One of Johanna's gentlemen was seated in the chair, the other was concealed in the cupboard. Johanna herself, sent on another errand, was watching obliquely through the window. After the usual double-talk, the barber made his excuses to go to the back shop. Smartly, and none too soon, the intended victim jumped out of the chair. With a clank and a thud the chair, on its trap door, dropped through the floor and a duplicate swung up in its place. The `victim' sat down in the seat again. When Todd reappeared he went rigid with fright, thinking that the dead man had returned to confront him. At that point he was arrested.
The climax in Bell's Yard was equally satisfactory. A fresh batch of pies was due up at nine o'clock.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine! Yes, it was nine at last. It strikes by old St. Dunstan's Church clock, and in weaker strains the chronometrical machine at he pie shop. echoes the sound. What excitement there is now to get at the pies when they shall come! Mrs. Lovett lets down the square movable platform that goes on pullies into the cellar; some machinery which only requires a handle being turned brings up a hundred pies on a tray. These are eagerly seized by parties who have previously paid, and such smacking of lips ensues as was never known. Down goes the platform for the next hundred and a gentleman says:
`Let me work the handle, Mrs. Lovett, if you please. It is too much for you, I am sure'
`Sir, you are very kind, but I never allow anybody on this side of the counter but my own people, sir. I can turn the handle myself,sir, if you please, with the assistance of this girl. Keep your distance, sir. Nobody wants your help.'
How the waggish young lawyers' clerks laughed as they smacked their lips and sucked in all the golopshious gravy of the pies, which by-the-way appeared to be all delicious veal that time, and Mrs. Lovett worked the handle of the machine all the more vigorously that she was a little angered with the officious stranger. What an unusual trouble it seemed to be to wind up those forthcoming hundred pies! How she toiled and how the people waited, but at length there came up the savory steam and then the tops of the pies were visible.
They came up upon a large tray about six feet square, and at that moment Mrs. Lovett ceased turning the handles and let a catch fall that prevented the platform receding again, to the astonishment and terror of everyone away flew all the pies, tray and all, and a man who was lying crouched in an exceedingly flat state under the tray sprang to his feet.
Mrs. Lovett shrieked, as well she might, and then she stood trembling and looking as pals as death itself. It was the young cook from the cellar who had adopted this mode of escape.
The throng of persons in the shop looked petrified, and after Mrs. Lovett's shriek there was an awful silence for about a minute and then the young man who officiated as a cook spoke.
`Ladies and gentlemen, I fear that what I am going to say will spoil your appetites; but truth is beautiful at all times, and I have to state that Mrs. Lovett's pies are made of human flesh'
How the throng of persons recoiled-- what a roar of agony and dismay there was! How frightfully sick about forty lawyer's clerks became all at once, and how they spat out the gelatinous clinging portions of the rich pies they had been devouring.
The exclamations of the consumers, once they were able to speak, were strangely anti-climactic, consisting of `Good-gracious!' `Oh, the pies!' and `Confound it'
Mrs. Lovett collapses and died of the mingled effects of shock and the poison with which Sweeney Todd had laced her brandy. The barber himself was moved to Newgate and in due course hanged. By a happy coincidence, the pie-man turned out to be Johanna's missing lover.
Concluded the author:
The youths who visited Lovett's pie-shop and there luxuriated upon those delicacies are youths no longer. Indeed the grave has closed over all but one and he is very, very old, but even now he thinks of how many pies he ate and how he enjoyed the flavor of the `veal' he shudders and has to take a drop of brandy.
Beneath the old church of St. Dunstan's were found the heads and bones of Todd's victims. As little as possible was said by the authorities about it, but it was supposed that some hundreds of persons must have perished in the frightful manner we have detailed.
It is unnecessary to follow Sweeney Todd through all the vicissitudes of penny publications. A generation after Edward Lloyd had launched him, Charles Fox took over and gave the barber a new run under the best-known title Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Sweeney Todd also made appearances in quite unexpected quarters. In 1883, a story entitled The Link Boy of Old London began in Fox's Boy's Standard. After a few chapters of old-fashioned Gothic, with a highwayman or two for good measure, the Demon Barber made his appearance. There were certain variations. Instead of the victims falling on to their heads twenty feet below the trap door, as in Prest's story, this author had them falling onto iron spikes. A suspicious constable was introduced. Failing to get any evidence on Todd, he would go round the corner to solace himself with half a dozen pies from Mrs. Darkman. Instead of having his assistant sent off to a madhouse, the barber knifed him in the back after a particularly crimson battle with two customers. Wiping his hands at the end, Todd observed: `Well, well, Mrs. Darkman can't complain of the supply to-night.'
This barber was sufficient of a sentimentalist to fall in love with the wife of one his customers. He dispatched the husband in the usual way, but realizing he could not marry the widow unless he had proof of her husband's death, he forbore to have the corps made into pies and arranged for it to be discovered mutilated in the street.
In this version, Todd was finally spotted through a constable during a fight in his shop's cellars of his shop. Mrs. Darkman died by poison. `A good riddance of two wretches,' said the head officer, `for there is no death devised by law except burning which is bad enough for them.'
Not all publishers were sensationalists. The cover of Mellifont Press Sweeney Todd (1936) was a lurid affair in color, showing a victim being dropped through the trap door; but only in one shocked sentence near the end was there any suggestion of dirty work below the stairs:
It was never quite clear how Todd got rid of the bodies of his various victims, the men whom he had murdered and robbed. There was one horrible rumor which grew into a legend in the neighborhood that Mrs. Lovett's pie-shop had disposed of them, but such a thing is too terrible to contemplate.
