5.33: Detective Blunt learns Sweeney Todd’s deadly secret! — Search for stolen trousers led to a dismembered torso! — High society’s favourite murdering stalker. (Segment 3 — The “Ha’penny Horrids.”)

SHOW NOTES — for — MINISODE 33 (Season 5)

(April 16, 2026)

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01:00: HANGED TODAY IN HISTORY (April 16): Meet James Hackman, creepy homicidal stalker who moved in on a Royal Opera soprano named Martha Ray and, when she would not have him, murdered her and tried unsuccessfully to kill himself. He was hanged for this crime on this day 247 years ago, April 16, 1779.

Links:

• ExecutedToday blog entry
• Wikipedia article on James Hackman

12:30: SWEENEY TODD, THE BARBER OF FLEET-STREET, Chapters 98-100: We continue following the party Sir Richard Blunt is leading through the vaults beneath St. Dunstan’s. They come through the dark tunnel and into a great stone vault, obviously built for some great edifice that has since been torn down and built over; and there’s a locked door on the other side. Through that, there is another locked door, and then — a dead body. It’s Mrs. Lovett’s spy, poisoned by Todd and thrust through the hole in his parlour floor. Then they hear a footstep overhead, and Todd’s voice carries through the hole in the floor.

Meanwhile, up in Todd’s shop, Mrs. Lovett is arriving for her appointment to collect her half of the blood money …

46:25: HORRID BROADSIDE: “Verses on Daniel Good, Who was Executed This Morning May, ’42, for the Murder of Jane Jones.” (1842) A sort of ballad in a galloping amphibrach quadrimeter, telling of the crime and execution of a man who murdered and dismembered his common-law wife and was caught when police officers searching for stolen trousers found her torso in the stable.

Links:

• Dr. Angela Platt's blog post on this story

GLOSSARY OF EARLY-VICTORIAN SLANG USED IN THIS EPISODE:

• CANARY BIRDS: Prisoners.
• CONVEYANCERS: Practitioners of larcenous enterprises, from theft to the fencing of stolen goods.
• KNIGHTS OF THE BLADE: Swaggering companions who are boastful of their prowess and may also claim a military rank — Captain, Major, Colonel — that they don’t really have a right to.
• TOPPING COVES: Executioners — specifically, hangmen, as “topped” is Flash-cant slang for “hanged” even though it sounds like it ought to refer to decapitation.
• KNIGHTS OF THE POST: Convicts being punished in the pillory. Also sometimes refers to perjurers who swear to falsehoods for a reward.
• TIP OUR RAGS A GALLOP: Run away as fast as we can.
• GRABS: Law enforcement personnel.
• TOUCH, or PUT THE TOUCH ON: To arrest.
• HELL CATS: Dangerous ladies who frequent the “hells” (gambling dens).
• BLACKLEGS: Professional gamblers who cheat to win.
• SPICE ISLANDERS: Swindlers. A double pun: Mace is a spice; a mace-man is a swindler; so a Spice Islander is, as it were, a resident of Swindle Island.
• SPEELING-CRIB: A “hell” (gambling den).
• COVENT GARDEN: London neighbourhood that was, in the Regency and early Victorian, famous as a place where bloods, bucks and choice spirits went to sport their blunt. Upscale gambling hells and brothels were conveniently close by the Royal Opera and Drury-lane Theatre.