The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 133: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

|? oh, the pies!—confound it “Tis false!” screamed Mrs. Lovett. “You are my prisoner, madam,” said the man who had obligingly offered to turn the handle of the machine that wound up the pies, at the same time producing a constable’s staff. “Prisoner!” “Yes, on a charge of aiding and abetting Sweeney Todd, now in custody, in the commission of many murders.” Mrs. Lovett staggered back, and her complexion turned a livid colour. “T am poisoned,” she said. “Good God! I am poisoned,” and she sank insensible to the floor. There was now some confusion at the door of the shop, for several people were effecting an entrance. These consisted of Sir Richard Blunt, Colonel Jeffery, Johanna Oakley and Tobias Ragg, who, when he escaped from the madhouse at Peckham Rye, went direct to a gentleman in the Temple, who took him to the magistrate. “Miss Oakley,” said Sir Richard, “you objected to coming here, but I told you I had a particular reason for bringing you. This night, about half an hour since, I made an acquaintance I want to introduce you to.” “Who—oh, who?” “There’s an underground communication all the way from Sweeney Todd’s cellar to the ovens of this pie-shop; and I found there Mrs. Lovett’s cook, with whom I arranged this little surprise for his mistress. Look at him, Miss Oakley, do you know him? Look up, Master Cook.” “Mark—Mark Ingestrie!” shrieked Johanna, the moment she glanced at the person alluded to. “Johanna!” In another moment she was in his arms, and clasped to his heart. “Oh, Mark, Mark—you are not dead.” “No, no—I never was. And you, Johanna, are not in love with a fellow, in military undress, you met in the Temple.” “No, no, I never was.” When Mrs. Lovett was picked up by the officers, she was found to be dead. The poison which Sweeney Todd had put into the brandy she was accustomed to solace herself with, when the pangs of conscience troubled her, and of which she always took some before the evening batch of pies came up, had done its work. That night Todd passed in Newgate, and in due time a swinging corpse was all that remained of the barber of Fleet Street. Mr. Fogg’s establishment, at Peckham Rye, was broken up, and that gentleman persuaded to emigrate, for which the government kindly paid all expenses [sent to a prison colony—ecm.]. Tobias went into the service of Mark Ingestrie, and, at the marriage of Mark with his beautiful bride, Big Ben, the beef-eater, did some extraordinary things, which space and opportunity will not permit us to chronicle in these pages. The youths who visited Lovett’s pie-shop, and there luxuriated upon those delicacies, are youths no longer. Indeed, the grave has closed over all but one, and he is very, very old, but even now, as he thinks of how he enjoyed the flavour of the “veal”, he shudders, and has to take a drop of brandy. Beneath the old church of St. Dunstan were found the heads and bones of Todd’s victims. As little as possible was said by the authorities about it; but it was supposed that some hundreds of persons must have perished in the frightful manner we have detailed. eo ® @ Our tale is over, and the only seeming mystery that has to be explained consists in settling the point with regard to who Thornhill was, and what became of him. He was just what he represented himself to be, the friend of Mark Ingestrie, to whom had been, by Mark, entrusted the care of the string of pearls; but he fell a victim to the awful criminality of Sweeney Todd, who was in league with Mrs. Lovett, and who robbed his murdered customers, while she sold them for pies. Mark Ingestrie, after many dangers and hardships, had reached London; but he did so, unfortunately, only just in time to follow Johanna to the Temple Gardens, in one of her innocent ramblings with Colonel Jeffery, but believing from that circumstance that she was false to him, and hearing nothing of his friend Thornhill, he, in a moment of despair, took the desperate situation of cook at Mrs. Lovett’s far-famed pie-shop, from where he so narrowly escaped with his life. ® & @ Johanna and Mark lived long and happily together, enjoying all the comforts of an independent existence; but they never forgot the strange and eventful circumstances connected with the string of pearls. QDOODOOOOOOO CORniclooo S CO)