The tale originally involved penny dreadfuls, a type of fiction commonly seen as the precursor to comics. After watching a DVD commentary of the show Angel, Scott Gray took note of a commentator who suggested removing the thing you like the most from a story to make it work. After discarding the penny dreadfuls, Gray found the story worked better. He also set it in the 1840s as gaslights were being introduced in London at that time and offered a back story.