The String of Pearls (1850), p. 550

"Gentlemen of the jury, neither Francis Thornhill nor the String of Pearls ever reach their destination. It appears that on his route, Thornhill went into the shop of the prisoner at the bar to be shaved, and no one ever saw him come out again. The dog though was found sitting at the door of the shop, and when Todd opened his shop-door, the dog rushed in and brought out his master's hat.
"Gentlemen, the captain of the ship and Colonel Jeffery, both became very anxious concerning the fate of Mr. Thornhill, and they made every inquiry. They questioned the prisoner at the bar, who at once admitted that he had shaved him, but stated that he had left his shop when that operation was over. The captain of the Star was compelled to go to Bristol with his ship, but Colonel Jeffery, in conjunction with a friend, pressed his inquiries about Mr Thornhill without success. The matter appeared to be involved in the most profound mystery, and the only hope of an elucidation of it, consisted in the probability that such a valuable piece of property as the String of Pearls would be sure to turn up some day in some one's possession. Gentlemen, it did so turn up. It appeared that at Hammersmith resided a Mr. John Mundell, who lent money upon securities, and it will be deposed in evidence, that one evening the prisoner at the bar, magnificently attired, and in a handsome coach, went to this Mr. Mundell, and pawned a string of pearls for some thousands of pounds.
"It is to be regretted that this Mundell cannot be brought before the jury. He is dead, gentlemen; but a confidential clerk of his, who saw the prisoner at the bar, will depose to the facts. We thus then, gentlemen of the jury, commit the prisoner with the disappearance of Thornhill, and now we come to the strongest features of this most remarkable case.
"It appears that for a considerable time past, the church of St. Dunstan's had become insufferable from a peculiar stench with which the whole of that
sacred edifice appeared to be constantly filled, and it baffled all the authorities to account for it."
"No one had been entombed in any of the vaults beneath the church for a considerable time, and in fact, there was no apparent reason for the frightful
miasmatic odour that upon all occasions filled the edifice, and day by day got worse instead of better. Scientific men, gentlemen of the jury, were consulted with regard to this stench in the church, and various very learned theories were broached upon the subject; but no one thought of making an accurate examination of the vaults beneath the church, until Sir Richard Blunt, the well-known magistrate, privately undertook it.
"Gentlemen, Sir Richard Blunt found that almost every vault was full of the fresh remains of the dead. He found that into old coffins, the tenants of which had mouldered to dust, there had been thrust fresh bodies with scarcely any flesh remaining upon them, but yet sufficient to produce the stench in the church, by the effluvia arising from them, and finding its way into the pews. In one vault, too, was found the contents of which were too horrid for description;
suffice it that it contained what butchers, when speaking of slaughtered animals, call the offal. The stench in St. Dunstan's Church was no longer a mystery.
"Well, gentlemen of the jury, Sir Richard Blunt persevered in his inventigations, and found that there was an underground connection from exactly beneath the shaving shop of the prisoner at the bar, and the cellarage of a house in Bell Yard, Temple-bar, which was his property; and which was in the occupation of
a female, named Lovett, who this day would have stood at the bar by the side of the prisoner, had she not, despite every vigilance used to prevent such an act,
succeeded in poisoning herself, while in prison in Newgate.
"Gentlemen of the jury, it will be shown in evidence that the way the larger portion of the flesh of Todd's victims was got rid of was by converting it into meat and pork pies upon the premises of Mrs. Lovett.
"Beneath Todd's shop was found a diabolical contrivance, by which he could make any one he pleased fall through the floor upon the chair they sat on to be