further serial was published by Charles Fox in 1878, by which time Todd had become the ‘Demon Barber of Fleet Street’. The legend gained further embellishments. No. 186 Fleet Street became established as Todd’s residence, an identification encouraged by the discovery of human bones under the cellar during building work in the late nineteenth century, supposedly those of Todd’s victims. Todd remained part of popular culture in the twentieth century and was the subject of several films. By the 1930s ‘The Sweeney’ had become Cockney rhyming slang for the Metropolitan Police’s flying squad, and in the 1970s it provided the name for a famous television drama series. The original French story, however, smacks of being an urban myth and the supposed book by Fouché is impossible to trace. Rue de la Harpe has made its presence felt in the history of the Revolution, or more precisely: in the annals of the revolutionary press. Paris bookseller AntoineFrançois Momoro was thirty-three years old when the Revolution began. He had arrived in Paris from his native Besançon in 1780. He was one of many small Parisian book dealers with little hope of advancement under the restrictive Old Regime. With the declaration of the freedom of the press in August 1789, however, his prospects looked a lot brighter. Embracing the revolutionary movement, he opened a printing shop at no. 171 Rue de la Harpe and declared himself the ‘First Printer of National Liberty’. In 1793, he composed and published a treatise on printing, the Traité élémentaire de l’imprimerie, which was intended to put the practical knowledge of printing within the reach of a broad audience. To this day, it remains the most complete source of eighteenth-century printing shop slang. Momoro used his press to launch a career in radical revolutionary politics, soon becoming the official ‘Printer for the Cordeliers Club’. When he was arrested in February 1794, the police made an inventory of his stock which consisted exclusively of pamphlets, handbills and posters. His business was totally devoted to the printed ephemera that sustained the Revolution. Economically, he made a good living out of his activities. The Revolutionary Tribunal heard repeated depictions of Momoro as a greedy opportunist who was notorious for shady dealings. In the first four years of the Revolution his business in printing revolutionary propaganda expanded