Pink String and Sealing Wax - Autumn 1974

Pink String and Sealing Wax explores the clash between two very different worlds in Victorian Brighton: the privileged, pious household of respected chemist and Public Analyst Edward Sutton, who rules his family with self-righteous cruelty, and the seedy underworld occupied by pub landlord's wife Pearl, her brutal, alcoholic husband, Joe, and her lover, minor villain Dan. Sutton's eldest son David stumbles naively into this twilight world, an act of adolescent rebellion after his stern father has crushed his hopes of marrying his sister's friend Mary. He quickly becomes smitten with the glamorous, street-smart Pearl, who tolerates his puppy love with detached amusement. It is David who comes upon Pearl after a particularly violent argument with Joe, and takes her to the chemist shop to treat her cut hand. Childishly boasting about the chemicals on the shelves, he unwittingly inspires Pearl to murder her husband when he reveals that the symptoms of strychnine poisoning are barely identifiable from lockjaw.