The String of Pearls (1850), p. 566

"My lord," said a counsel at the table, rising, "there was a very similar case about five years since, when a notorious criminal attacked a witness for the prosecution with a fork, and it appeared afterwards that as he was brought through some of the day-rooms of Newgate to the bar, he had hastily snatched it up from a table that he passed without the officers noticing him."
"This is very likely a similar case," said the judge.
"It may be so my lord," 5 said the Governor.
Todd yelled with rage, when he found that Sir Richard Blunt had escaped his malice. If he could but have taken his life or inflicted upon him some very serious injury, he would have been satisfied almost to have gone to death; but to fail was almost enough to drive him really mad.
"Curses on ye all!" he cried; and then he burst into a torrent of such frightful invectives, that everybody shrunk aghast from it, and it is quite impossible that we should transfer it to our pages. How long he would have proceeded in such a storm, there is no knowing, had not the officers rushed upon him, and by main force dragged him from the dock and the court into the dark passages leading to Newgate.
His voice was yet heard for several moments, uttering the most dreadful and diabolical curses!
It may be supposed that after what had happened, the officials of the prison were not over tender in the treatment of Sweeney Todd, for they well knew that they would be some time before they heard the last of the knife business, and indeed it was a piece of gross carelessness to allow a man in Todd's situation, and such a man as Todd too, to have an opportunity of doing such very serious mischief in a moment as he might have done.
There can be very little doubt, that if he had been content to do an injury to any other witness but Sir Richard Blunt, he would really have succeeded; but
that personage was too wary to fall in such a way.
It was not thought advisable by the prison authorities to take Todd back to the same cell from which they had brought him. It was an idea of the Governor, and by no means a bad one, that desperate criminals were caused to change their cells now and then, as it baffled and cut up completely any combination they might in their own minds have made for an attempted escape; so Todd found himself in a new place.
"Why is this,? he said. "Why am I placed here? This cell is darker than the one I before occupied."
"It's quite light enough for you," growled a turnkey.
"Yes," added one of the officers who had been in court. "Folks who are keen and bright enough to pick up knives, and nobody see 'em, mustn't have too much light in their cell. Oh, won't it be a mercy when you are settled next Monday morning."
"The fetters hurt me," said Todd.
"Oh, they are too light," said the officer; "and for your satisfaction, I have to tell you that the Governor has ordered you another pair."
At this moment a couple of blacksmiths came into the cell, carrying with them the heaviest set of irons in the whole prison, which the Governor had determind Sweeney Todd should be accommodated with. Without a word they proceeded to knock off the fetters that he wore.
"So you are not contented," said Todd, "to cage me as though I were some wild animal, but you must load me with irons?"
"And a good job too."
"And you think to hang me?"
"Rather!"
"Then thus I disappoint you, and be my own executioner!"
As he spoke, he snatched up one of the smith's hammers, and made a blow at his own forehead with it, which if it had taken effect, would unquestionably have fractured his skull, and killed him instantly; but one of the officers just managed to strike his arm at the moment and confuse his aim, so that