The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Set in London in the year 1785, the strange disappearance of a sailor named Lieutenant Thornhill, last seen entering Sweeney Todd's establishment on Fleet Street. Thornhill was bearing a gift of a string of pearls to a girl named  Johanna Oakley  on behalf of her missing lover, Mark Ingestrie, who is presumed lost at sea. One of Thornhill's seafaring friends, Colonel Jeffrey, is alerted to the disappearance of Thornhill by his faithful dog, Hector, and investigates his whereabouts. He is joined by Johanna, who wants to know what happened to Mark. Johanna's suspicions of Sweeney Todd's involvement lead her to the desperate and dangerous expedient of dressing up as a boy and entering Todd's employment after his last assistant, a young boy named  Tobias Ragg , has been incarcerated in a madhouse for accusing Todd of being a murderer. Eventually, the full grisly horror of Todd's activities is uncovered when the dismembered remains of hundreds of his victims are discovered in the crypt underneath St. Dunstan's church. Meanwhile Mark, who has been imprisoned in the cellars beneath the pie shop and put to work as the cook, escapes via the lift used to bring the pies up from the cellar into the pie shop. Here he makes the following startling announcement to the customers of that establishment, "Ladies and gentlemen - I fear that what I am going to say will spoil your appetites; but the truth is beautiful at all times, and I have to state that Mrs. Lovett's pies are made of  human flesh! " Mrs. Lovett is then poisoned by Sweeney Todd who is himself apprehended and hanged. Johanna marries Mark and lives happily ever after.