Lucy Barker

- Alms... alms... for a miserable woman... on a miserable chilly... morning... -

Lucy Barker, also called as Beggar Woman, is a major character in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. She is Sweeney Todd's wife and Johanna's mother.

She is portrayed by Laura Michelle Kelly.

Background[]

Personality[]

The insane Lucy is hysterical, raving and obsessed with the hell and the devil; she has got some vague memories about her life with her husband and her daughter, but not much.

Physical Appearance[]

Lucy in the flashbacks is beautiful, glowing and smiling: she's got curly, blonde hair and white, regular teeth. Her skin is rosy and shining and she wears a simple pink dress. In Mrs. Lovett's opinion is dumb and naive, and for her husband virtuous. She seems to be sweet and kind, but also strong because she stands up to Judge Turpin staying loyal to Sweeney.

As the Beggar Woman, most part of her beauty vanishes because of her illness and she keeps only a trace of beauty lingering upon her face. Always because of the illness, her visage is disfigured by pimples and sores and her hair becomes greasy and faded. Dirty and hunchbacked, she wears a grey and tattered dress with a huge hat which hides her face.

Role in the film[]

Lucy spends her simple and peaceful life with her older husband Benjamin Barker, a barber, and their infant daughter Johanna in Fleet Street, in London. The corrupted and wicked Judge Turpin notices her and her beauty and with a false accusation arrests the innocent barber, sending him in Australia. The young woman, inconsolable and at the same time disgusted by the Judge and his courtship, hides herself in her flat with the little Johanna and Turpin, furious, makes a horrible plan for have the attractive Lucy: he invites the woman through his shady Beadle to his masquerade party acting like he's regretful and he wants to apologize with her. Lucy goes to the party, full of people: the Beadle drugs the woman and then appears the Judge, naked, drunk and horny, who rapes the poor lady in front of the laughing guests. Lucy, humiliated and devasted, takes some poison for make suicide but the arsenic doesn't kill her, instead it makes her completely mad and frenzied: the Judge kidnaps her daughter Johanna and locks Lucy in the Bethlem Royal Hospital, an asylum, for a long time.

Released, she spends her days begging in the streets of London, with no memory of her past, while 15 years later her husband Benjamin Barker, now Sweeney Todd, returns in England for having revenge. His neighbour, the weird cook Mrs. Lovett, tells him that Lucy is dead (only for jealousy, because she deeply loves the barber and she hates his wife) and Todd starts to kill his costumers (and their bones become the secret ingredient of Mrs. Lovett's pies) plotting his vengeance on the Judge.

One day Lucy accepts the young and gawky sailor Anthony Hope's moneys and she describes to him the fair and stunning Judge Turpin's ward (aka Johanna, now a teenager who is locked in the Turpin House like a prisoner, because the man fears that Johanna's beauty could attract men): Anthony falls in love with the girl and swears he will save her from Turpin; the insane lady suggests him to give up because the Judge is very powerful and cruel.

The Beggar Woman is the first person who understands the ingredient of Mrs. Lovett's pies but no one believes her; one night she enters in the shop and she confronts Sweeney Todd in person: he doesn't recognizes her and he kills her, cutting her throat with his razor. Later, after the murder of Turpin, he sees her face and he understands what he has done. In despair, he kills Mrs. Lovett (who had lied to him) by pushing her into the oven and at the end he cries over Lucy's body before his assistant kills him with the same razor that he had used for Turpin and Lucy.