Sweeney Todd dogs alerting neighbors and the gendarmes. The two confess, and are summarily burned alive; the houses where the crimes took place are then razed. Whether this version of the story is based on "The String of Pearls" or its dramatisation, or a much older tale alluded to by Féval is unclear. In any case, it may well be the source for some recent versions that move the tale from London to Paris. In 1875, Frederick Hazleton's c. 1865 dramatic adaptation "Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street: or the String of Pearls" (see below) was published as Vol 102 of
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