Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in serialized Victorian popular fiction, known as "penny dreadfuls". A story called "The String of Pearls" was published in a weekly magazine during the winter of 1846-47. Set in 1785, the story featured as its principal villain a certain Sweeney Todd and included all the plot elements that were used by Sondheim and others ever since. The murderous barber’s story proved instantly popular – it was turned into a play before the ending had even been revealed in print. An expanded edition appeared in 1850, an American version in 1852, a new play in 1865. By the 1870s, Sweeney Todd
Thomas Sweeney (glassmaker) port of Wheeling in what was Ohio County, Virginia. Thomas Sweeney married his first wife, Rosanna Mathews (1809-1844) in Pittsburgh, and she bore four children before her death in 1844. They were Andrew J. Sweeney (1827-1893), Rebecca Sweeney, Thomas Sweeney Jr. (1842-1874) and Robert H. Sweeney. The widower remarried the following year, to Baltimore-born Jane Bell McFerran (1819-1872), who bore sons Michael T. Sweeney (b. 1849), John M.F. Sweeney (b. 1852) and daughter Ann (b. 1858). After her death, Sweeney remarried again, to Anna (1846-) who bore him a daughter Latitia in 1876. The Sweeney mansion was at 847 Main