In response to the ask ‘Is Sweeney a barber or a barber surgeon?‘
Every now and then someone comes along and asks a question that causes me to go 'hmm', before rushing headlong to the reference shelf. This is one of those times! In fact, the issue of the period setting has come up before and I suppose popular culture is to blame.
Is he [Sweeney] a barber or a barber surgeon? What is the difference?
Barbering as an occupation has a long history (it dates back to Medieval times) and the job description has changed drastically over the years, so it doesn't surprise me that it would be confusing.
Originally, there were barber surgeons and physicians (physicians at this time were learned men who didn't like to get their hands dirty. They were consultants and considered surgery to be beneath them). A barber surgeon often had no formal learning, would become familiar with his trade as an apprentice and would be expected to perform somewhat crude surgery, often on the war wounded. On one hand they would be cutting & dressing hair, shaving faces and making wigs and on the other, they would have to perform bloodletting, tooth pulling, enemas, extractions of troublesome bodies such as bladder stones and the worse case scenario; amputations.
Eventually, the barber surgeons split into two professions. The surgeons were university educated as surgical medicine became more advanced and the barbers were left with teeth-pulling and bloodletting. Nowadays barbers are purely hairdressers and are more likely to have a fainting fit should they have to do anything remotely surgical. The only trace left of the barber's former surgical side is the iconic barber pole which is striped with red and white bands said to represent blood and bandages (or alternatively, barbering and surgery).
Since the surgeons officially broke away from barbering in 1745 to form the Company of Surgeons (which later became the Royal College of Surgeons by charter in 1800) and The String of Pearls is set in Aug 1785, this would make Sweeney a barber rather than a barber surgeon. He would only have been allowed to pull teeth and perform bloodletting and that would have been the extent of his allowance. However, for the sake of artistic licence, I often refer to him as a barber surgeon as I imagine him to be unscrupulous enough to break the rules and allow him to partake in more bloody practices etc. (or at least I would, if I got around to doing any more damn art!) even though it's not historically accurate. It fits with his personality.
I thought the story was Victorian?
Yeah, popular perception is the one what won't be blamed for nothin!'
The first time Sweeney Todd appeared in print was in Edward Lloyd's Penny Dreadful serial The String of Pearls published between 1846 and 1847. There is no evidence of his existence, real or otherwise before that. So the source material was written in the Victorian era, the result of the trend for gruesome working class literature. Check.
The story itself, however, begins in August 1785. King George III's reign was from Oct 1760 to Jan 1820, which places the setting firmly in the 18th century, aka. the ‘Georgian period’. Despite the novel itself stating 'when King George was young', he had already been on the throne for 25 years.
So Sweeney Todd himself isn't a Victorian figure at all but a Georgian one, complete with stockings and tricorn hat. Why then do people view him as a Victorian figure? Well, two reasons:
One, the source material, as I said, is Victorian literature. Sweeney Todd, along with Spring Heeled Jack and Broad Arrow Jack and a load of other Jacks are just some of a great many famous Victorian literary entities.
The second reason is Stephen Sondheim. The end.
Up until recently, Sweeney Todd plays were set in the correct time frame. Then Sondheim came along and reset the story, complete with a new revenge plot, in the Victorian era. Why? Because he wanted to make a connection between Sweeney Todd & Mrs Lovett's actions and monstrous industrial enterprise. Sweeney & Lovett dispatch customers and process them for pies like a well-oiled machine, emulating fears over the spreading influences of industrial processes. Even the jarring whistle is symbolic of a factory process in action.
So there you have it!
When are you going to continue with the story?
When I’m feeling in a murderous mood. ;)
