Lucy Barker is a fictional character that appears in some versions of the story Sweeney Todd. Lucy is the wife of barber Benjamin Barker, who is unjustly imprisoned by Judge Turpin, who wants Lucy for himself. After Turpin sexually abuses her, Lucy attempts suicide with poison, but survives and goes insane.
Lovett tells Sweeney Todd (previously Benjamin Barker) that she had poisoned herself, however she conveniently forgets to add that she survived the attempted suicide. Although she survives, she is left mentally insane from it. After the Judge raped her, he took her daughter, Johanna Barker, as his ward.
Toby becomes deeply attached to Mrs. Lovett, thinking of her as a surrogate mother. When he discovers that Todd has been killing customers for Mrs. Lovett to bake into meat pies, however, he goes insane with horror and shock.
From there she presumably witnesses Todd's murders of the Beggar Woman and the Judge. She is nearly murdered by her father when he discovers her, as he does not recognize her as his daughter (seeing as he had never met her since infancy and because she is disguised as a young man).
Todd pretends to forgive her, but later throws her into the furnace, burning her alive as retribution for her lies. However, killing Lovett proves to be Todd's fatal mistake; Tobias, who loved her like a mother, emerges from hiding and kills Todd by slitting his throat with his own razor.
Sweeney Todd (2007) | No Place Like London ~ A Barber And His Wife (With Lirycs)
Why did Mrs. Lovett lie?
We learn that Mrs. Lovett's motivation was out of love for Mr. Todd, that was proved many times.. By the end, Todd discovered Lovett's half lie when he accidentally kills his wife, and Mrs.
Worried that he knows too much, Mrs. Lovett locks Toby in the bakehouse under the pretext of teaching him how to grind meat. While there, he discovers a piece of hair from a "black cow" and a fingernail in a pie he is eating.
The beggar woman turns out to be none other than Lucy Barker, Todd's long-lost wife. Mrs. Lovett confesses that it has been her love for Sweeney Todd, and her hopes that they would become lovers, that kept her from telling him Lucy was still alive.
Mistakenly believing her to be dead, Barker undertakes a long string of murders, with the ultimate goal of killing Turpin in order to avenge the destruction of his family. In the 2007 film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Lucy Barker is the wife of Benjamin Barker, a barber in London's Fleet Street.
What did Mrs. Lovett keep that she gives back to Sweeney?
Demanding to learn the fate of his family, Barker hears that his wife, Lucy, took arsenic, and that Judge Turpin adopted his daughter. Todd swears to take revenge on the Judge and the Beadle. Mrs. Lovett brings him his razors, which she has kept hidden away for all of these years.
After learning the truth, he kills Mrs. Lovett, but is in turn killed by Mrs. Lovett's assistant and surrogate son Tobias Ragg, who slits Todd's throat with his own razor. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Sweeny Todd, I must report, never actually existed. The Sweeney Todd story, as we know it today, was a fiction that appeared between November 1846 and March 1847 in Edward Lloyd's (1815-1890) The People's Periodical and Family Library as an eighteen part serial entitled The String of Pearls: A Romance.
The most important theme of the play was portrayal of the complete futility of revenge – how it blinds the one seeking it and is nothing but a moment of satisfaction that leads to future, largely build on regret.
When she tries to collect her share of the profits and get out of the business, Sweeney stabs her in a rage and throws her into the bakehouse fire. In fact, Mrs. Lovett is disposed of before the halfway mark of the play - she dies in the second act of a four-act production.
After three seemingly catastrophic confrontations with the razor-wielding barber (one in each act), Mark Ingestrie reappears alive and well in the final scene of the play. Right is restored, Sweeney Todd is disposed of and the lovers are reunited. A happy ending for all. Bond makes his hero more complex.
Outside of her house, Anthony Hope, a young sailor, hears her song and falls in love with her, vowing to save her from Turpin. Johanna sees him, she opens the window and she throws her door's key to him. The two make a plan to run away from the cruel judge. After this, to her horror, Turpin asks Johanna to marry him.
Lovett tells Todd she's "always had a fondness" for him, which he does not reciprocate. When he returns home from Australia, she lies and tells him his wife committed suicide. To her dismay, he continues to obsess over his wife and the life he once had, either not noticing or ignoring her romantic advances.
Judge Turpin, also known as Lord Turpin, is the main antagonist of the 1979 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and its 2007 film adaptation of the same name. He is a corrupt judge who ruined the life of Sweeney Todd.
He seeks revenge against Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who falsely convicted him because Turpin hungered for Todd's wife, Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), and then stole his child.
Mrs. Lovett: 40s, Cockney accent, energetic, talkative, has a crush on Sweeney. There is a very slight edge of insanity to her and a streak of larceny--she is motivated by desire--for money, for love, for popularity.
Most likely whoever Benjamin Barker was based on in reality never chose the name Sweeney Todd, rather it was a nickname the people who spread the horror story gave him.
Sweeney Todd tells the story of a man driven mad after having the woman he loved stolen from him and getting accused for a crime he didn't commit. Upon release from prison, he plans to exact revenge on the man who caused his current lot in life, aided by the maniacal Mrs. Lovett.
