Long before Tim Burton, an anonymous author created the infamous Sweeny Todd, “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” in 1846. Featured in The String of Pearls, a penny dreadful serial, Sweeny Todd is a barber who murders his customers and disposes the bodies by baking them into meat pies. His partner, Mrs. Lovett, sells the pies at a local shop in London. Set in 1785, the story begins with the strange disappearance of a sailor, Lt. Thornhill, last seen at Sweeny Todd’s shop. Thornhill had a string of pearls he was intending to give as a gift to a young girl, Johanna Oakley, on behalf of her lover, Mark Ingestrie, who had been lost at sea. Desperate to solve the mystery of Thornhill’s death and retrieve her trinket from her lost beau, Johanna disguises herself as a man and applies for a position at Sweeny Todd’s shop as an assistant. What she discovers leads to a bittersweet ending on Fleet Street.
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