| Lucy Barker/Beggar Woman | |
|---|---|
| Portrayed by | Merle Louise Sara Woods Laura Michelle Kelly Victoria Clark Diana Dimarzio |
| Information | |
| Aliases | The Beggar Woman |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Housewife |
| Spouse(s) | Sweeney Todd |
| Children | Johanna Barker |
Lucy Barker is a fictional character that appears in some versions of the story Sweeney Todd.
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In the original legend and in the earliest melodramas and plays, Sweeney Todd has no wife or backstory and is the primary villain of the stories he appears in. His wife Lucy first appears in Christopher Bond's play. She is the faithful and loving wife of Benjamin Barker and mother of Johanna Barker, whose life is destroyed by the horrible Judge Turpin, who exiles her husband in order to have her all to himself. Soon afterward, Turpin rapes her, so she then poisons herself with arsenic. She does survive, but goes insane and disappears to live as a poor beggar, surviving on alms. 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.
Lucy Barker is the wife of Benjamin Barker, a barber in London's Fleet Street. They are happily married and have a new baby- Johanna Barker. Judge Turpin is immediately jealous of Benjamin because of Lucy's beauty and has Barker arrested and exiled so that he may obtain her all for himself. Lucy ignores his pursuit, staying faithful to her husband, never once leaving home. Finally, she is called to Turpin's estate, led to believe that the judge feels incredibly responsible for her plight and wants to help her out. This is not the case: Lucy arrives at Turpin's masquerade ball, where he drugs and rapes her. Lucy is so distraught that she attempts to kill herself with poison, but survives and is driven completely insane. She has nearly forgotten everything that was dear to her and wanders the streets of London as a homeless, poor, beggar. When Barker, under the alias of "Sweeney Todd", returns years later, Mrs. Lovett, who is in love with him, leads him to believe that Lucy is dead. Lucy shows evident distaste for Mrs. Lovett, calling her a witch and constantly invading her meat pie shop. Eventually, when Johanna is upstairs at the barber shop, Lucy pursues her up the stairs, believing Turpin's minion Beadle Bamford to be in Todd's shop. Todd then shows up, and Lucy begins to recognize him. He cuts her throat and drops her body down the chute. Downstairs, after Todd kills Turpin, Lovett recognizes Lucy's body and scrambles to get rid of her. Todd enters, discovering that he had just killed his beloved wife, whereupon Lovett concedes that she lied to him because she was in love with him. Enraged, Todd throws Lovett in the oven to burn to death. Stricken with remorse, Todd holds Lucy's body — willingly allowing his assistant Tobias Ragg to cut his throat with his very own razor, leaving them dead in each other's arms.
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0032103/
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