Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Hope and the mysterious Sweeney Todd, whom Anthony has recently rescued at sea and befriended, dock in London. A beggar woman sexually solicits them, appearing to recognize Todd for a moment ("No Place Like London"), and Todd shoos her away. Todd relates some of his troubled past to Anthony: he was a naive barber, banished by a crooked judge who lusted after Todd's wife ("The Barber and His Wife"). Leaving Anthony, Todd enters a meat pie shop on Fleet Street, where the owner, the slatternly widow, Mrs. Lovett, laments the scarcity of meat and customers ("Worst Pies in London"). When
Sweeney Todd made it, and is quite sure it ain't kitten." Dickens then developed this in "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1843–44), published two years before the appearance of Sweeney Todd in "The String of Pearls" (1846–47), with a character called Tom Pinch who is grateful that his own "evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many country legends as doing a lively retail business in the metropolis". Claims that Sweeney Todd was a real person were first made in the introduction to the 1850 (expanded) edition of "The String of