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
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