George Dibdin Pitt

George Dibdin Pitt (born George Pitt , 30 March 1795 – 16 February 1855) was an English actor, stage manager and prolific playwright, specializing in melodrama. He was the first playwright to dramatize the fictional character Sweeney Todd, in his 1847 play The String of Pearls; or, The Fiend of Fleet Street.

George Pitt was born on 30 March 1795 in Lancashire to musician George Cecil Pitt and his wife, actress Sophia Pyne. George Cecil Pitt (baptised 1767 – 1820) was an illegitimate son of the actress Harriet Pitt and George Anderson. Harriet Pitt later had other children, with the musician and dramatist Charles Dibdin. As a young man, George Pitt took Dibdin as his middle name in honour of his uncles Charles Dibdin the younger and Thomas John Dibdin, who helped him find theatrical work. He married Sarah Rosalind Humber on 28 April 1814.

At least 250 of his plays survive, in whole or in part, dating from 1831 onward. In 1840 his play Rookwood at the City of London Theatre, adapted from the novel Rookwood by William Harrison Ainsworth, included the first dramatic depiction of Dick Turpin, the 18th-century highwayman. From 1841, he had a long-running success at the Royal Victoria Theatre with Susan Hopley; or, The Vicissitudes of a Servant Girl, adapted from the novel Adventures of Susan Hopley; or, Circumstantial Evidence by Catherine Crowe. The actress Eliza Vincent in the title role achieved her greatest success with this play. By 1849, it had been performed 343 times.

In 1843 he became actor-manager of the Britannia Theatre, where he produced more sensational melodramas such as Pauline the Pirate in 1845 and Margaret Maddison, the Female Felon in 1846. The Lord Chamberlain's Office refused to license some of his particularly lurid plays.

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