October 7, 2013 • 31 mins
Sweeney Todd is a well-known fictional character, a murderous barber who colludes with a cook to bake his victims into pies. There are many instances of the demon barber story being touted as a tale based in real-life events, but how true is that?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And since
we are officially in October, now we're going to talk
again about some kind of halloweeny theme things, this little
(00:23):
spook factor scariness. Yeah, so, uh, this time it's mass
murder related, but in uh, you know, an interesting way,
a musical way. Yeah. Well sometimes thanks to you endlest
theatrical productions, the Songdheim musical and the recent Tim Burton
film that was based on it. Sweeney Todd is a
character everybody knows of. H you know, he's a terrifying
(00:44):
killer who murders his victims when they're in a position
of weakness because he's a barber and they're lying there,
prone beneath his blade. And there are many instances of
the demon Barber story that are actually touted, uh as
a tale based on real life events, Like there will
be stage plays and you know, the program will say
based on real life events. Yeah. I always wonder is
that like is that really real real life events or
(01:06):
or is this like Fargo real life events? Yeah? So, uh,
that's something that's come up many times throughout the years,
and it's a story I find fascinating. Uh. And much
like Jack the Ripper, their truths and legends that have
kind of gotten mashed together, and so historians and scholars
have had to like sort through the gore and find
the nuggets of reality. Uh. And so that's why we're
doing that one today. We're kind of going to talk
(01:28):
through some of those easy to see why it's a
really gripping story. I feel like, if you want to
have tension in a movie, you can just have a
character be shaved by another person with a straight razor.
Straight razors do have like the instant association of I
could die from this. Yeah, let's just have like long
shots of somebody being shaved with straight razor. So add
(01:52):
to that the taboo of cannibalism and the intrigue of
unknowingly participating in it, and you've got something. Readers and theatergoers,
can you will pardon the pun sink their teeth into Yeah.
From the opening lines of any of the versions of
it to the horrible pronouncement that's made by an officer
in the daniuma of the Penny Dreadful version, which is quote,
(02:14):
ladies and gentlemen, I fear that what I am going
to say will spoil your appetites. But the truth is
beautiful at times. And I have to state that Mrs
Lovett's pies are made of human flesh. It's like one
of those stories that audiences have just loved for more
than a hundred and fifty years. Uh. Incidentally, if you
read the Penny Dreadful and will link to a version
of it, that danim all happens at the very end,
(02:36):
but it's pretty abrupt. It's kind of like all the
people are in line waiting for their pies and the
officer comes in and says that, and then they all
go on and then that's the end the story and
scene like it just wraps up really abruptly. But it
really all started, at least the versions that have become
very popular culturally with one writer, and his name was
(02:59):
Thomas Peck It pressed and you have probably not heard
of him unless you're really into this lore, but he's
a pretty pivotal figure in the Sweeney Todd story. And
I will say this at the outset that there is
still some debate, fringe debate among historians about whether or
not he was the one that wrote this kind of
see why in just a moment um, but most people
(03:21):
except that, yes, this was his work. And he was
born on May thirteenth in eighteen ten and Middlesex and
he was the third child of a blacksmith named William
Pressed and his wife Anne Peckett. He was chained as
a type setter and he began working for George Drake
in London at the age of twenty five, and he
edited and printed songbooks and compilations of short fiction. And
(03:43):
just a year after he started that work with George
Drake in in eighteen thirty six, Press was hired by
a London publisher named Edward Lloyd, and he was hired
along with two other writers named William Bale Bernard and
Morris Burnett to write copies of Dickens work and cash
in on the famous writer's reputation. And uh, the Pickwick
(04:04):
Papers had been extremely popular at the time, and so
Lloyd just cooked up this plan to hire a few
writers to churn out similar stories to um sell to
eager readers. I feel like this was like the six
version of the bud buzzfeedlistical kind of like, let's take
this thing that's really popular and make it really super popular.
Except it was a much weasilier than that because they
(04:27):
never gave credit. They just stole the work. Uh. And
those three men wrote under one pen name, which was Bos,
although Pressed is given the most credit for the work done,
which is why some people still argue that it could
have been one of the other men. But I mean,
they produced titles that were like Oliver Twists, that's t
W I S S, not Oliver Twists, and the post
(04:51):
humorous papers of the Pickwick Club. So they were doing
these very obvious knockoffs. It's kind of like if you
buy a DVD from a street vendor and you realize
it not really the movie you think it is. It
was very much like that. But part of it was
that they were writing these very cheap versions. Um Edward
Lloyd was printing really cheap versions because actual nice books
were too pricey for many people. Uh, and a lot
(05:14):
of people couldn't read that well, so it would have
been a huge investment. So these are like the cheap
versions that they would could read and feel that they
had gotten there their literature and their entertainment, and they
really probably didn't care so much about whether it was authentic, right,
you know who cared about whether it was authentic was
Charles Dickens. Yea, and not so delighted. And now, yeah,
he sued over the extremely obvious copyright infringement that was
(05:36):
going on. But Lloyd's argument was that the works being
produced by his enterprise were so bad that no true
reader could mistake them for actual Dickens work, and the
judge agreed with that argument. Yeah, which to me is
kind of weird. It's kind of like going, Ah, the
rooms don't know the difference anyway, so it's really not
a big deal. These people couldn't even read your books,
(05:56):
which is a very strange, well and kind of offensive. Yeah,
but at this point, even though they're about this plagiarism suit, Press,
it kind of settled into his career as a plagiarist
and so he would just whip out title after title
based on the work of famous writers, and they usually
published in penny weekly papers that were run by Lloyd.
(06:17):
And then he met a lady. Yeah. In November two,
Press married Elizabeth Barbara Moss, but unfortunately their newly wed
happiness did not go on for very long. Elizabeth died
six months later of uterine cancer and then after his
wife's death. There's kind of a gap in terms of
what we know about Press's life. It seems like he
(06:38):
just kept to himself and really focused on work. Yeah,
he never married again, and he did continue to to
um to write prolifically. He was producing a great deal
of work, even though most of it was rip off work. Uh.
Some accounts will claim that Press wrote more than two
hundred titles during the decade and change that he was
working for Lloyd, but the real number, still impressive, is
(07:00):
significantly lower. Its guest. Again, we have that mystery of
several people writing under one name, but it's believed that
somewhere between fifty and sixty titles were produced by Pressed. Uh.
But we don't know the exact count because there were
other other writers in that pie. His work covered a
variety of themes. There were nautical tales, adventures, and eventually
(07:23):
true life crime stories. And when he wasn't plagiarizing other
people's fiction, he would try to look for interesting stories
in the newspapers to come up with ideas for what
to write about, which is a little more legitimate. Yes, uh.
In in the end, we'll talk a little bit more
about his writing and kind of his legacy, but uh so.
(07:44):
In eighteen forty six Press debuted the character of Sweeney
Todd in a serialized story which was called The String
of Pearls, a romance, and it was set in five
and it was published in The People's Periodical, which was
one of Lloyd's penny dreadfuls. And initially Sweeney Todd was
kind of a secondary character, but he very quickly became
the focus of the series because he was so popular,
(08:05):
and the series was an immediate hit, and by the
end of its six month run there was a stage
adaptation already launched. A playwright by the name of George
Dipden Pitt retitled the story The String of Pearls the
Fiend of Fleet Street. He advertised it as a fact
based story, and the stage adaptation debut in March Oneste
(08:26):
at the Hawkston Theater, which was known for producing very
sensational melodramas. And from that point on it was almost
like Sweeney took on a life of his own. He
became part of public consciousness. It was a story that
was repeated as true so many times that people began
to believe it. People that couldn't read, would be told
the story by people who had read the book or
(08:47):
the series, and they would say no, and it's all true,
and it kind of made people believe that it was true.
Um never mind that there was no actual evidence of
the man. There had has not been evidence found owned
of an actual barbershop on Fleet Street during the late
eighteenth century, which is when the play was set. And
you know, the mid eighteen hundreds hundreds in London were
(09:09):
times when they were gruesome and horrifying things reported in
the papers every single day, and there was a public
appetite even for fictionalized version of horror. Uh So, it
was kind of like an ambiance that was really ready
for something like this to be believed. And further giving
the Butcher Barber story additional credibility even though there wasn't
(09:30):
real evidence, was the fact that a lot of the
plays and Penny Dreadful's uh stories that were being produced
at the time really were based in factual events. Uh
So it was kind of a perfect more ask for
this character to become considered an actual historical figure when
in fact not so much. Another probable influence is the
(09:56):
role of the barber in the eighteenth century. A lot
of them were barber so margins, and there was already
kind of an association of cutting people open. We've talked
before about blood letting is a medical practice a little bit,
and and that's something that barber has often did, and
that association makes it easy for that part of the
Sweeney Tod story to be believed. So dental work, blood letting,
(10:18):
and other minor surgeries were all part of the barber
surgeons trade. Yeah, they would do amputations. They would, I
mean they were. They already kind of had the chopping
people up thing going on. Yeah, I'm gonna take another
to do it maliciously. Yeah, I'm gonna give another shout
out to the podcast saw Bones, which has whole episodes
on both blood letting and amputation. Yeah. Uh And while
(10:41):
we think about that horror, do you want to pause
for just a moment and talk about our sponsor. Yeah,
let's let all that settle for a second. So back
to the demon barber. Yes. Uh. So, while the character
of Sweeney Todd is a fiction, they're actually him may
have been a true feed or two in the mix,
after all, because there are a number of actual events
(11:04):
that happened and we're reported, and would have been in
books and papers that um may have and I would
say even likely did feed into Press's characterization. So as
we've talked about before, he did sometimes go combing through
the newspapers to try to find ideas, and it's possible
that he stumbled across the following passage from the Annual Register,
(11:25):
which was dated December. The most remarkable murder was perpetrated
in the following manner by a journeyman barber that lives
near Hyde Park Corner, who had been for a long
time past jealous of his wife, but could no way
bring it home to her. A young gentleman, by chance
coming into his master's shop to be shaved and dressed,
and being in liquor, mentioned his having seen a fine
(11:48):
girl home to Hamilton's Street, from whom he had certain
favors the night before. At the same time describing her person,
the barber, concluding it to be his wife, in the
height of frenzy, cut the a woman's throat from ear
to ear and absconded, And then in a register of
criminals and crimes that were incarcerated in London's Newgate Prison,
(12:09):
which should not be taken as an official record. Some
people do interpret it that way, but my understanding is
that no, was it, because the records were kind of
just slapped ash at the point. Yeah, there's also some
theory that there was some sensationalism at worked there as well.
But it mentions a sixteenth century Scottish mass murderer by
the name of Sawny Bean, which some people say sounds
(12:30):
something like Sweeney Todd. Has some of the same letters. Yeah,
it's the same number of syllables. But being is said
to have raised his entire family in the tradition of murder,
and they lived in a cave as a clan uh,
and they would rob and kill their victims as people
just passed by, and then gruesomely they would eat them
(12:52):
and the entire family according to this account, which is
not substantiated. Again, this would have happened a long time ago,
when substantiation would have been difficult to um record and
still have Uh. The entire family was executed according to
the Newgate Calendar, which is this register of criminals, and
Bean's wife was allegedly a witch in many versions of
(13:15):
this story, which, if Press took inspiration from the register,
may have informed his development of Mrs Lovett's character a
little bit. This this whole clan can be an episode
on its own one day. It kind of reminds me
of the Peacock family on the X Files. It's much
bigger though they were like a clan of some numbers.
I've read her like forty eight to fifty people that
lived in this cave and it was kind of this
(13:36):
weird inbred family of cannibals in Scotland. It really could
be its own whole story, and it's quite fascinating, and
I'm sure any of our listeners who are kind of
into historical horror have heard of Sonny Bean because it's
a it's one of those big boogeyman. One of the
articles that I read, I think it was in the
an old BBC archive, referred to him as the hannibal
(13:59):
like or of Scotland. So he's got his own hole mythology.
Another tale, which really bears striking similarities to Press Press's
Sweeney Todd story, took place in Paris allegedly around eighteen
hundred and according to accounts that were recorded by Joseph Fouche,
who was the Parisian Minister of Police from seventeen fifteen
(14:23):
and who figures heavily in other parts of French history
in his eighteen sixteen books, so it would have been
right after he retired from his position. He wrote a
book called Archives of the Police, and in his book
he mentions a barber named Beck who, in cooperation with
a pastry cook named Mornay, committed a series of grizzly
(14:44):
murders and then uh Beck would hand off the bodies
to the cook for use in meat pies. Super familiar, No, Like,
I think I heard the story almost exactly the same
story on a stage play that the song is stuck
in ahead the whole time we've been talking. And although
the pastry cook in this version was a male, the um,
(15:04):
it's a little different, but it's so similar in every
other way. But this particular story is also a questionable authenticity. Uh.
Some have asserted that uh Fuchet was trying to write
kind of a sensational book after his retirement from the police,
just kind of as a you know, a money making endeavor. Um.
But it even though it was questioned, UH, it was
(15:27):
republished in London in a magazine called The tell Tale
in eighteen twenty four. So it's entirely possible that press
would have come across it at some point, although we
don't know for certain, and I didn't include it in
my notes. But there is also one other Parisian barber
murderer story that uh, I want to say, goes back
(15:48):
to the fourteen hundreds. It's really shadowy. There's not a
lot of details, but it is kind of the like
it's a barber and he slipped people's throats and then
meat by Yeah, just in a they're similar boogeyman kind
of story that Uh, there's really not much to go
on with that one, but I feel it's worth just
kind of a side mention, right, And there have been
(16:10):
numerous examinations of various elements of the story and all
kinds of books written about whether Sweeney Todd was a
real person. We don't really have conclusive evidence that there
is one person who was definitely the inspiration for Sweeney Todd,
but the barber and his cohort love it have become
part of the mythology of London. Yeah, a few years
(16:30):
ago there was a um, it's more than a few
but a while back there was a historian who claimed
he had studied all of these things and wrote a
book that was about the real Sweeney Todd, but uh,
it really didn't cite a lot of actual sources, and
it it read very fictional. So it's been very, very controversial,
even though and I believe that historian has since passed
(16:51):
um and I think calling him historian um some people
would take issue with, but so they're there have been
attempts to prove out that there was a real person here,
But really the best we have to go on are
some of these other things that probably we're feeding into
the public consciousness and certainly would probably have come to
the attention of someone who routinely page through papers and
(17:15):
police journals looking for story ideas. But the interesting thing
is really the life that happened to this character and
and this story after um Press kind of let go
of it and let it be its own thing. Just
you know, long after the publication of String of Pearls,
we're still telling the boogeyman story of this slaughtering barber, uh,
(17:39):
and this phenomenon. What's interesting about it is that it
started almost immediately after the story was published, Like it
became such an instant hit. And I think we're so
used to in modern media, Like, there will be things
that get very very popular and we glom onto them
and it's everywhere for a little while. It's kind of
a flash in the pan, it dies off, but Sweetie
Thought has just kept going and going and going and
(18:00):
going for more than fifteen decades. Yeah. So we mentioned
the seven melodrama staged by George Dibden pit but within
months there were also knockoff versions of the story that
we're selling tickets all over London, which kind of reminds
us of how Pressed got to start as an author
and knocking off Charles Dickens. Yeah, there was just a
lot of um, a lot of knockoffs, coping. I was
(18:24):
going to say creative borrowing, but that's way too kind.
People really were just trying to trade in on the
popularity of a thing by putting perpetually, you know, more
slap dashy versions of things out. It's kind of like
making a copy of a copy of a copy of
a copy. Feel like that's still going on today. I
think if I could time travel, one of the things
I would do would be to go back to London
(18:45):
during this time and watch like eight different versions of
the Sweeney Todd story and see how different or like
they were. And I bet some of them had crazy
character name changes, which would be very entertaining. It's reminding
me of like the Halloween costumes that are clearly a
trademarked character but are not actually licensed. They're called They're
(19:06):
called things like weird clown, like happy cookie, puppet, like sir.
I have a feeling the same thing was going on. Uh.
In n six, Sweeney Todd got a new life in
the first film adaptation of The Tail, and Sweeney Todd
was played by the actor Todd Slaughter, and Slaughter really
got a lot of mileage out of this. He went
(19:27):
on to play that role repeatedly in theatrical productions pretty
much for the rest of his career. So Sweeney gave
back to the theatrical community in this regard. In nine,
the story was adapted into a ballet, which I find hilarious.
It was choreographed by John Cranko and performed by the
Royal Ballet Company, and then Stephen Sondheim's musical version, Sweeney
(19:51):
Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, debuted on Broadway
in nineteen seventy nine, and it starts Angela Landsberry as
Mrs Lovett and lend are you in the lead role
and in March two, which I only just noticed late
in the game. I think they debuted it at the
same time, like on the anniversary of its original stage debut.
(20:14):
Um but he gave. There's a somewhat mixed review of
the play in The New York Times by critic Richard Eater,
and it stated that quote there is in fact no
serious social social message in Sweeney And at the end,
when the cast lines up on the stage and points
to us singing, there are Sweeney's all about. The point
is unproven. These are defects, vital ones. But they are
(20:36):
all failures of an extraordinary, fascinating and often ravishingly lovely effort.
None of those are things that would make my review
of the musical Sweeney Todd a mixed review. Mine would
mostly be that I don't super care for the sondheimdi
of nature that makes Sondheim be Sonheim. Yeah, I'm not
(20:56):
a huge sondheime fan, but his it is interesting because
it's It's um a fun review to read because he
is clearly so taken with how beautifully the the show
is staged, but that he does kind of find it
a shrugger by the end of it, where he's like,
I don't know, it was fun, it was fun. A
couple of hours I have had the same, like one
line of the song about the demon Barbara, like the
(21:19):
whole time we've been talking. I'm sorry, I've stuck in
my head. I've managed to stay earworm free, probably because
I'm not the hugest fan of musical to begin with. Well,
that's that's part of my problem is I think that's
the only line from any of the songs in the
show that I know, and it's over and over well,
and I mean, I'll confess I have the Tim Burton
version and I watch it with some level of frequency,
(21:41):
but it's largely about the costumes. Um, and it's it's
fun again and uh, Sasha Baron Cohen. So I think though,
the reason I wanted to pull that out of Richard
Eater's review was that I think he's onto something here
about the appeal of Sweeney Todd, That it is this
warning about a thing that's very terrifying and scary, but
(22:04):
there's never been enough substantive proof to really make it
feel life threatening. It's really kind of like an urban
legend now it's like the sorority girl who wakes up
and finds her roommate has been murdered and there's writing
in blood on the wall. Like it's that kind of
story with that kind of appeal. Yeah, it's super scary,
but because you never know a person who actually went
through that, like, no one, you know. I'm sure someone
(22:27):
will say that they do, but most of those people
probably don't want to talk about it and tell it
and kind of excited whispers, whereas this is one of
those things that it's like and there's this demon barber
and people could do that. You could get killed by
a barber. But because there's not a grounding in reality,
it still maintains that excitement and the fervor around it.
It's thrilling without necessarily being actually scary. Yeah, and now
(22:51):
I mean since um barber's and certainly barber surgeons are
not really a thing. I mean, barber still are, but
not quite the same style that these would have been,
it's even less of an immediate threat. So it's kind
of we can even glom on a little harder to
the excitement of it. But even despite that kind of
mediocre review, that production won eight tony Awards. I think
(23:14):
largely because it was so unique at the time. Uh,
and it's been staged that sometimes. Version has been staged hundreds,
if not thousands of times since by theater companies of
all sizes. It's always a big ticket seller. I mean
community theaters love to do it because they bring in
huge audiences for them. Usually. Um, it's been done in
like every theater in America. Almost I wouldn't say that
(23:36):
it was an actual fact, but it's almost that prolific.
I wish there were a learner and low version of
Sweeney Todd. I would be all into that. Or Riders
in Hammerstein Sweeney Todd, super exciting Rellie Peppy Clink clink
clang with the razor Tracy no no okay. I went
(24:00):
an interview with the BBC in two thousand five as
part of a press junket for a new adaptation of
the Sweeney Todd story. Producer and writer Joshua st. Johnston
relays that while he didn't find any solid evidence of
a true demon barber of Todd's ilk, he could easily
see how that kind of atrocity who could have gone
almost unnoticed in London in the late seventeen hundreds. He
(24:22):
describes the seventeen sixties worlds his research turned up as quote,
a brutal and brutalizing world, and that we don't know
of any real serial killers from that time might be
more to do with the fact that murder was so
easy to get away with, rather than that there weren't
any um As a fun side note, uh In his
(24:43):
book Voice Will Be Boys, about the famed characters of
Victorian Penny dreadfuls in the dicey publishing industry in Victorian London,
writer E. S. Turner makes an interesting assertion that we
can actually thank Sweeney Todd for the transition from the
use of the word barber to the word hairdresser, because
Barbara became so associated with horror for a while that
it fell out of use in the general public. I
(25:05):
don't know if that's true. I don't either. I didn't
find anything to fact check it, but he kind of
tells that as like a an interesting tale about how
the language evolved as a consequence. Yeah, I don't think
when Patrick talks about getting his haircut, I don't think
he says that he goes to the hairdresser. Well, now,
but were you can make the argument that we've ebbed
back away, you know what I mean that at the
(25:25):
time that Sweeney Todd was becoming popular in the eighteen hundreds,
for a while barbera stopped being quite as popular. Term
hairdresser rose up, and now it's you don't even say hairdresser,
you say stylist. Anyway, Um, let's talk about the language.
You to talk about people who cut hair, yeah, and
estheticians and all. There's plenty of other language. But that
(25:47):
just was an interesting side note. Pressed, who we could
call the father of Sweeney Todd, died of tuberculosis, which
I feel like has been a theme on the party
about tubercularis lately because it was extremely prev Yeah, and
I certainly did not intend to find more tuberculous is
doing this one, but there it was on June five
of eighteen fifty nine. And he was a popper at
(26:09):
the time even though he had created this, you know,
renowned and very long lived character. And Pressed was buried
in an unmarked grave as part of a popper's burial
that he was basically given by the government. But he's
now recognized as one of the most widely read authors
of the eighteen forties and there's even a little bit
of movement of people that are trying to um suggest
(26:30):
that even though he was writing these uh basically plagiarized pieces,
that he was actually a much better author than people
give him credit for. And I'll be interested to see
where that goes in the coming years, if people can
really put together some scholarship that makes that case clearly.
But it's interesting. Do you have some listener mail? I do, indeed,
(26:52):
and this one is very, very fun. I love it
and it's from our listener, Joe, and Joe says hello.
I'm an avid listener to stuff umised in history. It
gives me through car drives, paperwork and boring work events.
I just listened to the podcast on the Nasca Lines
and I loved it. Last year I traveled down to
Peru and visited Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu. It was
(27:13):
the trip of a lifetime. I can only imagine. I
have not been, and I want to really bad. The
city of Cusco is the most fascinating place I have
ever been. You mentioned food being a primary motivation in travel.
I agree, and Cousco was definitely a wonderful experience. I
had fresh quail eggs, served out of a hat coca
leaf tea for the fourteen thousand foot altitude and the
(27:34):
highlight of the trip, Coyo. Coyo is guinea pig in Quechua,
the ancient language that the people live the mountains speak.
I was there over Easter weekend and witnessed the traditional
meal of coyo on a Holy Thursday, which they believe
Jesus ate at the last supper. It tasted exactly like
Canadian bacon, only in the shape of a guinea pig.
(27:54):
We only managed a few tastes since we could not
bear dismantling the poor childhood pet. Oh No, I don't
think it was any child's actual pet, but that was association. This,
combined with the ambiance of the beautiful architecture in which
the foundations and lower levels of the buildings u are
inc and carved rock, and the tops of classical Spanish
from the conquistadors, makes for a wonderful experience that sounds
(28:18):
really fun and fabulous. I probably could not emotionally handle
it because of that whole um animal connection thing. Ironically,
I'm not a vegetarian, right I want to be in
my head, but it's difficult in my in my stomach,
you know what. It reminds me of what there. There's
a series of books that I like a lot that
are about basically what if there were dragons daring the
(28:40):
Napoleonic Wars? And they're the Tamor era books. And the
third to last one, like the last one is not
out yet, so one before the current one. They're in
uh there in South America. And some of the food
they talk about talks about sounds like like the food Man.
South American cooking doesn't get as much play I think
(29:01):
in the US in terms of like adopted cuisines from
other places, like the way other cuisines will kind of
go through these surges and popularity. Peruvian is getting a
little bit more play. But Resilience states there are some
really delicious stuff that we have no idea about you yet.
But ye, that sounds so fun, And thank you so
much for sharing your your trip stories, because that sounds
(29:22):
like an adventure beyond compare almost. Yes, I want to
hear more about the Quai legs in the hat though?
How are they prepared? Where they cooked in the hat?
Did they just dump them in the hat? I gotta know? Uh,
tell us if you have eaten things in hats, or
you want to share anything else with us, you can
do so by emailing us at History Podcast at Discovery
(29:43):
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learn more about what we talked about today, I accept
two things. One, you can go to our website and
search the term serial killer, which you'll turn up an
(30:04):
article called how serial Killers Work. And if you just
want to play, you can type in the words Sweeney
Todd and the article that you will get is doesn't
matter how many blades are in your racer, which I
just think is super funny and sort of a wonderfully uh,
you know, odd oddly associated thing. If you would like
to learn about those things, or anything else your mind
(30:25):
can conjure, you can do that at our website, which
is how stuff Works dot com. For more on this
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And since
we are officially in October, now we're going to talk
again about some kind of halloweeny theme things, this little
(00:23):
spook factor scariness. Yeah, so, uh, this time it's mass
murder related, but in uh, you know, an interesting way,
a musical way. Yeah. Well sometimes thanks to you endlest
theatrical productions, the Songdheim musical and the recent Tim Burton
film that was based on it. Sweeney Todd is a
character everybody knows of. H you know, he's a terrifying
(00:44):
killer who murders his victims when they're in a position
of weakness because he's a barber and they're lying there,
prone beneath his blade. And there are many instances of
the demon Barber story that are actually touted, uh as
a tale based on real life events, Like there will
be stage plays and you know, the program will say
based on real life events. Yeah. I always wonder is
that like is that really real real life events or
(01:06):
or is this like Fargo real life events? Yeah? So, uh,
that's something that's come up many times throughout the years,
and it's a story I find fascinating. Uh. And much
like Jack the Ripper, their truths and legends that have
kind of gotten mashed together, and so historians and scholars
have had to like sort through the gore and find
the nuggets of reality. Uh. And so that's why we're
doing that one today. We're kind of going to talk
(01:28):
through some of those easy to see why it's a
really gripping story. I feel like, if you want to
have tension in a movie, you can just have a
character be shaved by another person with a straight razor.
Straight razors do have like the instant association of I
could die from this. Yeah, let's just have like long
shots of somebody being shaved with straight razor. So add
(01:52):
to that the taboo of cannibalism and the intrigue of
unknowingly participating in it, and you've got something. Readers and theatergoers,
can you will pardon the pun sink their teeth into Yeah.
From the opening lines of any of the versions of
it to the horrible pronouncement that's made by an officer
in the daniuma of the Penny Dreadful version, which is quote,
(02:14):
ladies and gentlemen, I fear that what I am going
to say will spoil your appetites. But the truth is
beautiful at times. And I have to state that Mrs
Lovett's pies are made of human flesh. It's like one
of those stories that audiences have just loved for more
than a hundred and fifty years. Uh. Incidentally, if you
read the Penny Dreadful and will link to a version
of it, that danim all happens at the very end,
(02:36):
but it's pretty abrupt. It's kind of like all the
people are in line waiting for their pies and the
officer comes in and says that, and then they all
go on and then that's the end the story and
scene like it just wraps up really abruptly. But it
really all started, at least the versions that have become
very popular culturally with one writer, and his name was
(02:59):
Thomas Peck It pressed and you have probably not heard
of him unless you're really into this lore, but he's
a pretty pivotal figure in the Sweeney Todd story. And
I will say this at the outset that there is
still some debate, fringe debate among historians about whether or
not he was the one that wrote this kind of
see why in just a moment um, but most people
(03:21):
except that, yes, this was his work. And he was
born on May thirteenth in eighteen ten and Middlesex and
he was the third child of a blacksmith named William
Pressed and his wife Anne Peckett. He was chained as
a type setter and he began working for George Drake
in London at the age of twenty five, and he
edited and printed songbooks and compilations of short fiction. And
(03:43):
just a year after he started that work with George
Drake in in eighteen thirty six, Press was hired by
a London publisher named Edward Lloyd, and he was hired
along with two other writers named William Bale Bernard and
Morris Burnett to write copies of Dickens work and cash
in on the famous writer's reputation. And uh, the Pickwick
(04:04):
Papers had been extremely popular at the time, and so
Lloyd just cooked up this plan to hire a few
writers to churn out similar stories to um sell to
eager readers. I feel like this was like the six
version of the bud buzzfeedlistical kind of like, let's take
this thing that's really popular and make it really super popular.
Except it was a much weasilier than that because they
(04:27):
never gave credit. They just stole the work. Uh. And
those three men wrote under one pen name, which was Bos,
although Pressed is given the most credit for the work done,
which is why some people still argue that it could
have been one of the other men. But I mean,
they produced titles that were like Oliver Twists, that's t
W I S S, not Oliver Twists, and the post
(04:51):
humorous papers of the Pickwick Club. So they were doing
these very obvious knockoffs. It's kind of like if you
buy a DVD from a street vendor and you realize
it not really the movie you think it is. It
was very much like that. But part of it was
that they were writing these very cheap versions. Um Edward
Lloyd was printing really cheap versions because actual nice books
were too pricey for many people. Uh, and a lot
(05:14):
of people couldn't read that well, so it would have
been a huge investment. So these are like the cheap
versions that they would could read and feel that they
had gotten there their literature and their entertainment, and they
really probably didn't care so much about whether it was authentic, right,
you know who cared about whether it was authentic was
Charles Dickens. Yea, and not so delighted. And now, yeah,
he sued over the extremely obvious copyright infringement that was
(05:36):
going on. But Lloyd's argument was that the works being
produced by his enterprise were so bad that no true
reader could mistake them for actual Dickens work, and the
judge agreed with that argument. Yeah, which to me is
kind of weird. It's kind of like going, Ah, the
rooms don't know the difference anyway, so it's really not
a big deal. These people couldn't even read your books,
(05:56):
which is a very strange, well and kind of offensive. Yeah,
but at this point, even though they're about this plagiarism suit, Press,
it kind of settled into his career as a plagiarist
and so he would just whip out title after title
based on the work of famous writers, and they usually
published in penny weekly papers that were run by Lloyd.
(06:17):
And then he met a lady. Yeah. In November two,
Press married Elizabeth Barbara Moss, but unfortunately their newly wed
happiness did not go on for very long. Elizabeth died
six months later of uterine cancer and then after his
wife's death. There's kind of a gap in terms of
what we know about Press's life. It seems like he
(06:38):
just kept to himself and really focused on work. Yeah,
he never married again, and he did continue to to
um to write prolifically. He was producing a great deal
of work, even though most of it was rip off work. Uh.
Some accounts will claim that Press wrote more than two
hundred titles during the decade and change that he was
working for Lloyd, but the real number, still impressive, is
(07:00):
significantly lower. Its guest. Again, we have that mystery of
several people writing under one name, but it's believed that
somewhere between fifty and sixty titles were produced by Pressed. Uh.
But we don't know the exact count because there were
other other writers in that pie. His work covered a
variety of themes. There were nautical tales, adventures, and eventually
(07:23):
true life crime stories. And when he wasn't plagiarizing other
people's fiction, he would try to look for interesting stories
in the newspapers to come up with ideas for what
to write about, which is a little more legitimate. Yes, uh.
In in the end, we'll talk a little bit more
about his writing and kind of his legacy, but uh so.
(07:44):
In eighteen forty six Press debuted the character of Sweeney
Todd in a serialized story which was called The String
of Pearls, a romance, and it was set in five
and it was published in The People's Periodical, which was
one of Lloyd's penny dreadfuls. And initially Sweeney Todd was
kind of a secondary character, but he very quickly became
the focus of the series because he was so popular,
(08:05):
and the series was an immediate hit, and by the
end of its six month run there was a stage
adaptation already launched. A playwright by the name of George
Dipden Pitt retitled the story The String of Pearls the
Fiend of Fleet Street. He advertised it as a fact
based story, and the stage adaptation debut in March Oneste
(08:26):
at the Hawkston Theater, which was known for producing very
sensational melodramas. And from that point on it was almost
like Sweeney took on a life of his own. He
became part of public consciousness. It was a story that
was repeated as true so many times that people began
to believe it. People that couldn't read, would be told
the story by people who had read the book or
(08:47):
the series, and they would say no, and it's all true,
and it kind of made people believe that it was true.
Um never mind that there was no actual evidence of
the man. There had has not been evidence found owned
of an actual barbershop on Fleet Street during the late
eighteenth century, which is when the play was set. And
you know, the mid eighteen hundreds hundreds in London were
(09:09):
times when they were gruesome and horrifying things reported in
the papers every single day, and there was a public
appetite even for fictionalized version of horror. Uh So, it
was kind of like an ambiance that was really ready
for something like this to be believed. And further giving
the Butcher Barber story additional credibility even though there wasn't
(09:30):
real evidence, was the fact that a lot of the
plays and Penny Dreadful's uh stories that were being produced
at the time really were based in factual events. Uh
So it was kind of a perfect more ask for
this character to become considered an actual historical figure when
in fact not so much. Another probable influence is the
(09:56):
role of the barber in the eighteenth century. A lot
of them were barber so margins, and there was already
kind of an association of cutting people open. We've talked
before about blood letting is a medical practice a little bit,
and and that's something that barber has often did, and
that association makes it easy for that part of the
Sweeney Tod story to be believed. So dental work, blood letting,
(10:18):
and other minor surgeries were all part of the barber
surgeons trade. Yeah, they would do amputations. They would, I
mean they were. They already kind of had the chopping
people up thing going on. Yeah, I'm gonna take another
to do it maliciously. Yeah, I'm gonna give another shout
out to the podcast saw Bones, which has whole episodes
on both blood letting and amputation. Yeah. Uh And while
(10:41):
we think about that horror, do you want to pause
for just a moment and talk about our sponsor. Yeah,
let's let all that settle for a second. So back
to the demon barber. Yes. Uh. So, while the character
of Sweeney Todd is a fiction, they're actually him may
have been a true feed or two in the mix,
after all, because there are a number of actual events
(11:04):
that happened and we're reported, and would have been in
books and papers that um may have and I would
say even likely did feed into Press's characterization. So as
we've talked about before, he did sometimes go combing through
the newspapers to try to find ideas, and it's possible
that he stumbled across the following passage from the Annual Register,
(11:25):
which was dated December. The most remarkable murder was perpetrated
in the following manner by a journeyman barber that lives
near Hyde Park Corner, who had been for a long
time past jealous of his wife, but could no way
bring it home to her. A young gentleman, by chance
coming into his master's shop to be shaved and dressed,
and being in liquor, mentioned his having seen a fine
(11:48):
girl home to Hamilton's Street, from whom he had certain
favors the night before. At the same time describing her person,
the barber, concluding it to be his wife, in the
height of frenzy, cut the a woman's throat from ear
to ear and absconded, And then in a register of
criminals and crimes that were incarcerated in London's Newgate Prison,
(12:09):
which should not be taken as an official record. Some
people do interpret it that way, but my understanding is
that no, was it, because the records were kind of
just slapped ash at the point. Yeah, there's also some
theory that there was some sensationalism at worked there as well.
But it mentions a sixteenth century Scottish mass murderer by
the name of Sawny Bean, which some people say sounds
(12:30):
something like Sweeney Todd. Has some of the same letters. Yeah,
it's the same number of syllables. But being is said
to have raised his entire family in the tradition of murder,
and they lived in a cave as a clan uh,
and they would rob and kill their victims as people
just passed by, and then gruesomely they would eat them
(12:52):
and the entire family according to this account, which is
not substantiated. Again, this would have happened a long time ago,
when substantiation would have been difficult to um record and
still have Uh. The entire family was executed according to
the Newgate Calendar, which is this register of criminals, and
Bean's wife was allegedly a witch in many versions of
(13:15):
this story, which, if Press took inspiration from the register,
may have informed his development of Mrs Lovett's character a
little bit. This this whole clan can be an episode
on its own one day. It kind of reminds me
of the Peacock family on the X Files. It's much
bigger though they were like a clan of some numbers.
I've read her like forty eight to fifty people that
lived in this cave and it was kind of this
(13:36):
weird inbred family of cannibals in Scotland. It really could
be its own whole story, and it's quite fascinating, and
I'm sure any of our listeners who are kind of
into historical horror have heard of Sonny Bean because it's
a it's one of those big boogeyman. One of the
articles that I read, I think it was in the
an old BBC archive, referred to him as the hannibal
(13:59):
like or of Scotland. So he's got his own hole mythology.
Another tale, which really bears striking similarities to Press Press's
Sweeney Todd story, took place in Paris allegedly around eighteen
hundred and according to accounts that were recorded by Joseph Fouche,
who was the Parisian Minister of Police from seventeen fifteen
(14:23):
and who figures heavily in other parts of French history
in his eighteen sixteen books, so it would have been
right after he retired from his position. He wrote a
book called Archives of the Police, and in his book
he mentions a barber named Beck who, in cooperation with
a pastry cook named Mornay, committed a series of grizzly
(14:44):
murders and then uh Beck would hand off the bodies
to the cook for use in meat pies. Super familiar, No, Like,
I think I heard the story almost exactly the same
story on a stage play that the song is stuck
in ahead the whole time we've been talking. And although
the pastry cook in this version was a male, the um,
(15:04):
it's a little different, but it's so similar in every
other way. But this particular story is also a questionable authenticity. Uh.
Some have asserted that uh Fuchet was trying to write
kind of a sensational book after his retirement from the police,
just kind of as a you know, a money making endeavor. Um.
But it even though it was questioned, UH, it was
(15:27):
republished in London in a magazine called The tell Tale
in eighteen twenty four. So it's entirely possible that press
would have come across it at some point, although we
don't know for certain, and I didn't include it in
my notes. But there is also one other Parisian barber
murderer story that uh, I want to say, goes back
(15:48):
to the fourteen hundreds. It's really shadowy. There's not a
lot of details, but it is kind of the like
it's a barber and he slipped people's throats and then
meat by Yeah, just in a they're similar boogeyman kind
of story that Uh, there's really not much to go
on with that one, but I feel it's worth just
kind of a side mention, right, And there have been
(16:10):
numerous examinations of various elements of the story and all
kinds of books written about whether Sweeney Todd was a
real person. We don't really have conclusive evidence that there
is one person who was definitely the inspiration for Sweeney Todd,
but the barber and his cohort love it have become
part of the mythology of London. Yeah, a few years
(16:30):
ago there was a um, it's more than a few
but a while back there was a historian who claimed
he had studied all of these things and wrote a
book that was about the real Sweeney Todd, but uh,
it really didn't cite a lot of actual sources, and
it it read very fictional. So it's been very, very controversial,
even though and I believe that historian has since passed
(16:51):
um and I think calling him historian um some people
would take issue with, but so they're there have been
attempts to prove out that there was a real person here,
But really the best we have to go on are
some of these other things that probably we're feeding into
the public consciousness and certainly would probably have come to
the attention of someone who routinely page through papers and
(17:15):
police journals looking for story ideas. But the interesting thing
is really the life that happened to this character and
and this story after um Press kind of let go
of it and let it be its own thing. Just
you know, long after the publication of String of Pearls,
we're still telling the boogeyman story of this slaughtering barber, uh,
(17:39):
and this phenomenon. What's interesting about it is that it
started almost immediately after the story was published, Like it
became such an instant hit. And I think we're so
used to in modern media, Like, there will be things
that get very very popular and we glom onto them
and it's everywhere for a little while. It's kind of
a flash in the pan, it dies off, but Sweetie
Thought has just kept going and going and going and
(18:00):
going for more than fifteen decades. Yeah. So we mentioned
the seven melodrama staged by George Dibden pit but within
months there were also knockoff versions of the story that
we're selling tickets all over London, which kind of reminds
us of how Pressed got to start as an author
and knocking off Charles Dickens. Yeah, there was just a
lot of um, a lot of knockoffs, coping. I was
(18:24):
going to say creative borrowing, but that's way too kind.
People really were just trying to trade in on the
popularity of a thing by putting perpetually, you know, more
slap dashy versions of things out. It's kind of like
making a copy of a copy of a copy of
a copy. Feel like that's still going on today. I
think if I could time travel, one of the things
I would do would be to go back to London
(18:45):
during this time and watch like eight different versions of
the Sweeney Todd story and see how different or like
they were. And I bet some of them had crazy
character name changes, which would be very entertaining. It's reminding
me of like the Halloween costumes that are clearly a
trademarked character but are not actually licensed. They're called They're
(19:06):
called things like weird clown, like happy cookie, puppet, like sir.
I have a feeling the same thing was going on. Uh.
In n six, Sweeney Todd got a new life in
the first film adaptation of The Tail, and Sweeney Todd
was played by the actor Todd Slaughter, and Slaughter really
got a lot of mileage out of this. He went
(19:27):
on to play that role repeatedly in theatrical productions pretty
much for the rest of his career. So Sweeney gave
back to the theatrical community in this regard. In nine,
the story was adapted into a ballet, which I find hilarious.
It was choreographed by John Cranko and performed by the
Royal Ballet Company, and then Stephen Sondheim's musical version, Sweeney
(19:51):
Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, debuted on Broadway
in nineteen seventy nine, and it starts Angela Landsberry as
Mrs Lovett and lend are you in the lead role
and in March two, which I only just noticed late
in the game. I think they debuted it at the
same time, like on the anniversary of its original stage debut.
(20:14):
Um but he gave. There's a somewhat mixed review of
the play in The New York Times by critic Richard Eater,
and it stated that quote there is in fact no
serious social social message in Sweeney And at the end,
when the cast lines up on the stage and points
to us singing, there are Sweeney's all about. The point
is unproven. These are defects, vital ones. But they are
(20:36):
all failures of an extraordinary, fascinating and often ravishingly lovely effort.
None of those are things that would make my review
of the musical Sweeney Todd a mixed review. Mine would
mostly be that I don't super care for the sondheimdi
of nature that makes Sondheim be Sonheim. Yeah, I'm not
(20:56):
a huge sondheime fan, but his it is interesting because
it's It's um a fun review to read because he
is clearly so taken with how beautifully the the show
is staged, but that he does kind of find it
a shrugger by the end of it, where he's like,
I don't know, it was fun, it was fun. A
couple of hours I have had the same, like one
line of the song about the demon Barbara, like the
(21:19):
whole time we've been talking. I'm sorry, I've stuck in
my head. I've managed to stay earworm free, probably because
I'm not the hugest fan of musical to begin with. Well,
that's that's part of my problem is I think that's
the only line from any of the songs in the
show that I know, and it's over and over well,
and I mean, I'll confess I have the Tim Burton
version and I watch it with some level of frequency,
(21:41):
but it's largely about the costumes. Um, and it's it's
fun again and uh, Sasha Baron Cohen. So I think though,
the reason I wanted to pull that out of Richard
Eater's review was that I think he's onto something here
about the appeal of Sweeney Todd, That it is this
warning about a thing that's very terrifying and scary, but
(22:04):
there's never been enough substantive proof to really make it
feel life threatening. It's really kind of like an urban
legend now it's like the sorority girl who wakes up
and finds her roommate has been murdered and there's writing
in blood on the wall. Like it's that kind of
story with that kind of appeal. Yeah, it's super scary,
but because you never know a person who actually went
through that, like, no one, you know. I'm sure someone
(22:27):
will say that they do, but most of those people
probably don't want to talk about it and tell it
and kind of excited whispers, whereas this is one of
those things that it's like and there's this demon barber
and people could do that. You could get killed by
a barber. But because there's not a grounding in reality,
it still maintains that excitement and the fervor around it.
It's thrilling without necessarily being actually scary. Yeah, and now
(22:51):
I mean since um barber's and certainly barber surgeons are
not really a thing. I mean, barber still are, but
not quite the same style that these would have been,
it's even less of an immediate threat. So it's kind
of we can even glom on a little harder to
the excitement of it. But even despite that kind of
mediocre review, that production won eight tony Awards. I think
(23:14):
largely because it was so unique at the time. Uh,
and it's been staged that sometimes. Version has been staged hundreds,
if not thousands of times since by theater companies of
all sizes. It's always a big ticket seller. I mean
community theaters love to do it because they bring in
huge audiences for them. Usually. Um, it's been done in
like every theater in America. Almost I wouldn't say that
(23:36):
it was an actual fact, but it's almost that prolific.
I wish there were a learner and low version of
Sweeney Todd. I would be all into that. Or Riders
in Hammerstein Sweeney Todd, super exciting Rellie Peppy Clink clink
clang with the razor Tracy no no okay. I went
(24:00):
an interview with the BBC in two thousand five as
part of a press junket for a new adaptation of
the Sweeney Todd story. Producer and writer Joshua st. Johnston
relays that while he didn't find any solid evidence of
a true demon barber of Todd's ilk, he could easily
see how that kind of atrocity who could have gone
almost unnoticed in London in the late seventeen hundreds. He
(24:22):
describes the seventeen sixties worlds his research turned up as quote,
a brutal and brutalizing world, and that we don't know
of any real serial killers from that time might be
more to do with the fact that murder was so
easy to get away with, rather than that there weren't
any um As a fun side note, uh In his
(24:43):
book Voice Will Be Boys, about the famed characters of
Victorian Penny dreadfuls in the dicey publishing industry in Victorian London,
writer E. S. Turner makes an interesting assertion that we
can actually thank Sweeney Todd for the transition from the
use of the word barber to the word hairdresser, because
Barbara became so associated with horror for a while that
it fell out of use in the general public. I
(25:05):
don't know if that's true. I don't either. I didn't
find anything to fact check it, but he kind of
tells that as like a an interesting tale about how
the language evolved as a consequence. Yeah, I don't think
when Patrick talks about getting his haircut, I don't think
he says that he goes to the hairdresser. Well, now,
but were you can make the argument that we've ebbed
back away, you know what I mean that at the
(25:25):
time that Sweeney Todd was becoming popular in the eighteen hundreds,
for a while barbera stopped being quite as popular. Term
hairdresser rose up, and now it's you don't even say hairdresser,
you say stylist. Anyway, Um, let's talk about the language.
You to talk about people who cut hair, yeah, and
estheticians and all. There's plenty of other language. But that
(25:47):
just was an interesting side note. Pressed, who we could
call the father of Sweeney Todd, died of tuberculosis, which
I feel like has been a theme on the party
about tubercularis lately because it was extremely prev Yeah, and
I certainly did not intend to find more tuberculous is
doing this one, but there it was on June five
of eighteen fifty nine. And he was a popper at
(26:09):
the time even though he had created this, you know,
renowned and very long lived character. And Pressed was buried
in an unmarked grave as part of a popper's burial
that he was basically given by the government. But he's
now recognized as one of the most widely read authors
of the eighteen forties and there's even a little bit
of movement of people that are trying to um suggest
(26:30):
that even though he was writing these uh basically plagiarized pieces,
that he was actually a much better author than people
give him credit for. And I'll be interested to see
where that goes in the coming years, if people can
really put together some scholarship that makes that case clearly.
But it's interesting. Do you have some listener mail? I do, indeed,
(26:52):
and this one is very, very fun. I love it
and it's from our listener, Joe, and Joe says hello.
I'm an avid listener to stuff umised in history. It
gives me through car drives, paperwork and boring work events.
I just listened to the podcast on the Nasca Lines
and I loved it. Last year I traveled down to
Peru and visited Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu. It was
(27:13):
the trip of a lifetime. I can only imagine. I
have not been, and I want to really bad. The
city of Cusco is the most fascinating place I have
ever been. You mentioned food being a primary motivation in travel.
I agree, and Cousco was definitely a wonderful experience. I
had fresh quail eggs, served out of a hat coca
leaf tea for the fourteen thousand foot altitude and the
(27:34):
highlight of the trip, Coyo. Coyo is guinea pig in Quechua,
the ancient language that the people live the mountains speak.
I was there over Easter weekend and witnessed the traditional
meal of coyo on a Holy Thursday, which they believe
Jesus ate at the last supper. It tasted exactly like
Canadian bacon, only in the shape of a guinea pig.
(27:54):
We only managed a few tastes since we could not
bear dismantling the poor childhood pet. Oh No, I don't
think it was any child's actual pet, but that was association. This,
combined with the ambiance of the beautiful architecture in which
the foundations and lower levels of the buildings u are
inc and carved rock, and the tops of classical Spanish
from the conquistadors, makes for a wonderful experience that sounds
(28:18):
really fun and fabulous. I probably could not emotionally handle
it because of that whole um animal connection thing. Ironically,
I'm not a vegetarian, right I want to be in
my head, but it's difficult in my in my stomach,
you know what. It reminds me of what there. There's
a series of books that I like a lot that
are about basically what if there were dragons daring the
(28:40):
Napoleonic Wars? And they're the Tamor era books. And the
third to last one, like the last one is not
out yet, so one before the current one. They're in
uh there in South America. And some of the food
they talk about talks about sounds like like the food Man.
South American cooking doesn't get as much play I think
(29:01):
in the US in terms of like adopted cuisines from
other places, like the way other cuisines will kind of
go through these surges and popularity. Peruvian is getting a
little bit more play. But Resilience states there are some
really delicious stuff that we have no idea about you yet.
But ye, that sounds so fun, And thank you so
much for sharing your your trip stories, because that sounds
(29:22):
like an adventure beyond compare almost. Yes, I want to
hear more about the Quai legs in the hat though?
How are they prepared? Where they cooked in the hat?
Did they just dump them in the hat? I gotta know? Uh,
tell us if you have eaten things in hats, or
you want to share anything else with us, you can
do so by emailing us at History Podcast at Discovery
(29:43):
dot com. You can also connect with us on Twitter
at missed in History, and we're on Facebook dot com
slash history class Stuff. We're also on tumbler at missed
in History dot tumbler dot com, and we're on Pinterest
pinning up a storm. Uh. If you would like to
learn more about what we talked about today, I accept
two things. One, you can go to our website and
search the term serial killer, which you'll turn up an
(30:04):
article called how serial Killers Work. And if you just
want to play, you can type in the words Sweeney
Todd and the article that you will get is doesn't
matter how many blades are in your racer, which I
just think is super funny and sort of a wonderfully uh,
you know, odd oddly associated thing. If you would like
to learn about those things, or anything else your mind
(30:25):
can conjure, you can do that at our website, which
is how stuff Works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics. Because it has toff works
dot com. Netflix streams TV shows and movies directly to
(30:50):
your home, saving you time, money, and hassle. As a
Netflix member, you can instantly watch TV episodes and movies
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