Sweeney Todd "Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays". A scholarly, annotated edition of the original 1846–47 serial was published in volume form in 2007 by the Oxford University Press under the title of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street", edited by Robert Mack. The original story of Sweeney Todd quite possibly stems from an older urban legend, originally based on dubious pie-fillings. In Charles Dickens' "Pickwick Papers" (1836–37), the servant Sam Weller says 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
Joel Sweeney been constructed from a gourd (like the banjo's African ancestors and cousins), Sweeney popularized the use of a drum-like resonating chamber (legend has it that he adapted a cheese box for this purpose). He has also been credited with adding the banjo's fifth string, which according to legend was for an instrument he created for his niece between 1831 and 1840. He supposedly added the fifth string because he was "allegedly unhappy with the limited rhythm and melodic variation of the four-string banjos popularly in use." In fact, there is no proof that Sweeney introduced either innovation. "Outlandish claims have