The String Of Pearls

The String of Pearls: A Romance, is the title of a fictional story first published as a penny dreadful serial from 1846-47. The main antagonist of the story is the infamous Sweeney Todd, "the Demon Barber of Fleet Street," who here makes his literary debut.

Todd is a barber who murders his customers and turns their remains into meat pies, sold at the pie shop of his partner in crime: Mrs. Lovett; Todd's barber shop is situated in Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan's church, and is connected to Lovett's bakers shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage. Todd dispatches his victims by pulling a lever while they are in his barber chair, which makes them fall backward down a revolving trapdoor, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. In the event they are alive, he goes to the basement and "polishes them off" by slitting the victim's throat with his straight razor. Todd has a young assistant namedTobias Ragg.
A story published anonymously in 1846-47