The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs Lovett
01 Jun 2025.

by Drew Rowsome -

Mrs Lovett and her notorious, and reputedly delicious, meat pies are legendary from penny dreadfuls and, ever since Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, to musical theatre aficionados. Now, in the grand tradition of Disney villains (Cruella), Mrs Lovett gets a rehabilitating back story. Fortunately The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs Lovett comes not from a magic kingdom but rather from Corinne Leigh Clark (who "loves to read and write shadowy Gothic stories" according to her website bio) and a favourite horror author David Demchuk ("Nature's Mistake" from Queer Little Nightmares, Red X, The Bone Mother). How the collaboration worked is immaterial, the final result is seamless. Of course it helps that the narrative, consisting of a series of letters and newspaper clippings ostensibly written in the late 1800s, conforms to the literary styles of contemporaries Stoker, Hawthorne, Poe and Conan Doyle. I'll leave it to historians and literalists to judge the accuracy of the voices, but the concept lends the tale an elegant veracity and a doom-laden atmosphere.  

Initially I was surprised to find the identity of Mrs Lovett revealed so early on. The novel begins, and ends, with a female journalist's search for where the notorious Mrs Lovett has disappeared to. Though she was supposedly dead, a corpse identified as hers had been found, the journalist tracks her down to a convent and begins a correspondence with a "Margaret C Evans (Miss)" who initially denies any knowledge of "Margery Lovett." She writes, "Have you found another avenue to pursue in your quest to unearth your murderess? I expect if we are to have newspapers then we must have them sold. Unlike the odious Lovett, I am alive and present, and would gladly unburden my soul to you if I thought it would uplift another, if only someone might listen." Evans launches right into an autobiography, far from uplifting, beginning with her bleaker, and considerably more blood-soaked, than Dickens childhood as the daughter of a butcher. From there she is sold to a Freemason doctor who has a sinister agenda but a kindly (on the surface, everyone in this world except Evans is evil) housekeeper who teaches Evans to bake. Pies. 

There is a detour to a brothel, a pregnancy born of satanic ritual, and a series of coincidences, only a pair that stretch our credulence, that lead us to the world of Sweeney Todd. It is an intricate and clever structure that hinges on a clue in the prologue and ends with a hilariously hideous twist that I only saw coming as it hit. Clark and Demchuk spend time on décor, clothing and details, not only because it was the literary norm at the time, but also to illustrate the huge social inequalities that kept Evans in poverty and always in danger simply because she was a woman. They also don't stint on the dirt and stench that was life for the non-elite at that time. No matter how one dresses it up, we're all just meat on the hoof. But Evans is hard working, resourceful and determined. And most of all, unafraid to get her hands dirty. Or bloody. The Victorian era undergound is represented with a lesbian twist and two endearingly drawn gay characters who are instrumental in saving, temporarily, Evans from harm. The villains are malevolent and even the angels turn to devils when there is a profit to be made. A lesson Evans learns well.

When Evans, now Lovett, does meet Sweeney Todd her story kicks into high gear. This Sweeney is not a romantic figure and his redeeming back story is dispensed with quickly. While erotically menacing in a Heathcliffian manner, Lovett has her heart, and loins, claimed elsewhere. However the two do join forces in grisly teamwork of mutual advantage. A team that is always threatened by numerous forces both diabolical and instruments of the law. It is a rollicking, gripping ride of a tale. Running parallel, but on a much slenderer track, to Evans/Lovett's narrative, is another plotline where the journalist struggles to verify Evans' story. Her attempts to do so put herself and her family into danger. The two plotlines dovetail into a taut suspenseful denouement that speeds towards considerable violence, gore and the aforementioned deliciously bleak twist. For all her attempts at clearing her name, and she does gain our empathy and admiration, Mrs Lovett may not really be worthy of redemption. A deceptively unreliable narrator. But her hitherto untold story is worthy of attention, chilling, and vastly entertaining.