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The story behind the legend of Sweeney Todd

Johnny Depp as the Demon Barber

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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

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The story behind the legend of Sweeney Todd

Pies and murder – two perennials of London life. It‘s no wonder, then, that we have a long-standing fascination with the legend of Sweeney Todd, the serial-killing hairdresser with a sideline in baked goods. As Tim Burton‘s take on the bloody tale hits the cinema, Lee Jackson looks at the truth behind the legend

‘All that blood!’ exclaims the pie-maker Mrs Lovett in Stephen Sondheim’s musical ‘Sweeney Todd’, as she spies the murderous barber’s first victim. Tim Burton’s film adaptation, featuring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, certainly delivers that: bloody raindrops dripping over the opening credits; a carmine tide in the city’s sewers; blood gushing (and how!) from the throats of Depp’s victims, choreographed to Sondheim’s soaring score.

In the unlikely event you’re unfamiliar with the Sweeney Todd story, the plot can be summarised succinctly. Todd, a Fleet Street barber, surreptitiously murders his clients and their corpses are profitably made into delicious meat pies by his obliging neighbour, Mrs Lovett. ‘We’ll serve anyone… to anyone’ as the lyric artfully puts it.

Todd is, of course, a Victorian serial killer, though his exploits predate that very modern label. He is, moreover, probably one of London’s most enduring villains. In recent years, Sondheim’s portrayal of Todd has done much to keep his name alive. An unlikely Broadway hit in 1979, blending elements of comedy and horror, it introduced the character to the United States, garnered legions of fans and ultimately made a relatively obscure piece of London folklore world famous. Yet, in the UK, we have always enjoyed the antics of this particular monster in film, television and theatre – Ray Winstone took the title role in a BBC version as recently as 2006 – and discerning visitors to our metropolis can even enjoy a Sweeney Todd ‘attraction’ at the London Dungeon. But where does the tale of the butchering barber originate? It has long been assumed that Todd’s fictional exploits were based on a true story. Many people are still convinced that Todd’s crimes were as real as those of Jack the Ripper. The facts, however, are somewhat different.

Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs Lovett, the pie maker" width="210" height="140" />

Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs Lovett the pie-maker

The story begins in the 1830s with one Edward Lloyd, an enterprising publisher of ‘penny dreadfuls’ who aimed his cheap weekly serials squarely at the working poor. Titles like ‘The Calendar of Horrors’ and ‘Varney the Vampire’ (a famous blood-sucking fiend, 50 years before Dracula) give some idea of his subject matter. He also specialised in pirated versions of Dickens' works at a time when copyright law counted for little. Thus poorer readers could buy a budget copy of his ‘Oliver Twiss’ or ‘Nikelas Nickelbery’. Lloyd would later found a radical/liberal newspaper and become quite respectable.

Nonetheless, his main legacy to modern culture was a story called ‘The String of Pearls’ published in a weekly magazine during the winter of 1846/47, written by an anonymous penny-a-word hack. Set in 1785, it features as principal villain a certain Sweeney Todd (‘a long, low-jointed, ill-put-together sort of fellow’), and includes all the plot elements that have been used by Sondheim and others ever since. There is the barber’s shop, from which a remarkable number of customers never return (courtesy of a chair that flips them upside down, plunging them to their deaths in the stone-floored cellar), an ill-used apprentice boy (who is consigned to a lunatic asylum, a pair of deeply uninteresting star-crossed lovers (obligatory in any Victorian popular fiction) and the enterprising Mrs Lovett, whose pies are finally discovered to contain something rather more exotic than mince.

‘The String of Pearls’ isn’t great literature, but Lloyd was on to something. The psychopathic barber’s story proved instantly popular: it was turned into a play before the ending had even been revealed in print. An expanded edition appeared in 1850, an American version in 1852, a new play in 1865. By the 1870s, Sweeney Todd was a familiar character to most Victorians. Nothing so strange in that, perhaps; except that, according to contemporary accounts, most of them seem to have believed that Todd was real.

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A very close shave for Alan Rickman's Judge Turpin

Lloyd himself is largely to blame for a confusion that’s lasted for more than 150 years. He was a genius at marketing and knew the value of a so-called true story, not least one conveniently just beyond living memory. In a preface to an expanded edition, he stated that ‘there certainly was such a man; and the record of his crimes is still to be found in the chronicles of criminality of this country’. And it was this assertion, now easily disproved by records from the period, that stuck. So much so, in fact, that the recently deceased connoisseur of pulp fiction, Peter Haining, once published a book claiming to have found ‘proof’ of Todd’s existence. Unfortunately, all of Haining’s proof is – let’s be generous – rather difficult to verify; indeed, the book is a carefully planned hoax.

It seems much more likely that the story originated in urban myth. Dickens himself in ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ (1843/44) mentions facetiously ‘preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis’. Even today, most of us have heard scare stories of various bits of anatomy appearing in fast food. Imagine, then, how it must have been in mid-Victorian London, when food was frequently coloured and doctored to make it more saleable and few legal restrictions were in place. Indeed, in the 1840s and 1850s, many Londoners feared – with good reason – that their sausages and pies were being filled with cheap horsemeat (normally hawked round the streets as cat food); it didn’t require much imagination to take that scam one stage further.

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Tim Burton on set in a recreated Victorian London

In fairness, Lloyd’s artful co-opting of history has probably served Sweeney Todd quite well, leaving it usefully open to different interpretations. A 1926 silent movie (now lost) reportedly played it for laughs. The 1936 film (‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’) features the great Tod Slaughter, wringing his hands and cackling ‘I’ll polish him off’, although bizarrely, the victims’ final destination is never explicitly mentioned: perhaps the filmmakers feared that Mrs Lovett’s pies would give the censors indigestion. A musical version first appeared in London in 1959, a ballet in 1960. And the London Dungeon wasn’t the first to provide a ‘Sweeney Todd Experience’; in the 1920s a wine merchant in Johnson’s Court, off Fleet Street, purported to be the site of Todd’s shop. Not content with infamy by association, the shop proudly displayed the ‘original’ barber’s chair, complete with mechanism for dropping customers into the basement.

Sondheim’s musical is, in fact, based on Christopher Bond’s 1973 play, which introduced a psychological background to Todd’s crimes (he was the victim of a ruthless judge who raped his young wife and transported him to Australia). With Burton’s movie likely to garner worldwide attention, this may now become the accepted story; it is certainly already better known than the Victorian original. But, whatever the details, it seems likely that Sweeney Todd and his gruesome dinners will be with us for many years to come.

LM Jackson is a novelist and the creator of ‘The Dictionary of Victorian London’ (www.victorianlondon.org). His latest book, ‘A Most Dangerous Woman’ (Arrow) is available in paperback from February 7.

‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ opens on January 25.

Visit our Sweeney Todd site for heals of fear-filled content including an exclusive audio tour of the Demon Barber's London

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User comments on this story

emily said...

duh it obviously real Posted on Jul 08 2008 13:37

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Kjartan Andersen said...

If he was a real person then the court-files would show the details of his crimes. The trial-transcripts show no such trial. You could search for yourself at oldbaileyonline.org. Posted on Jul 05 2008 23:51

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lee jackson said...

He isn't real. Ever heard of an 'urban myth'? Sweeney Todd is just that ... the Victorian publisher of the original story pretended it was 'based on a true story' but it's all made up ... it's the oldest trick in the book to persuade people to buy something grisly and exciting. There's no actual evidence anywhere, if you try and go back to original sources - which is what serious historians have done. The Oxford University Press edition of 'The String of Pearls' by Robert Mack addresses this, if you're really keen to read about it. Posted on Jul 01 2008 20:12

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pea brain said...

Is sweeney todd real or not??? Posted on Jul 01 2008 15:27

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Lee Jackson said...

I'm fascinated so many people still want to claim Todd existed. I'm guessing the "facts" people have quoted below are from Peter Haining's book on Todd, which have been widely copied onto the internet, without people checking the sources. All the claims in that book are easily falsified by looking at accounts of trials of the day, newspapers etc. which are now themselves online ... http://www.oldbaileyonline.org for one ... Todd just isn't there, folks. If you actually do the hard research, you come back to Reynold's penny dreadful as the source of the myth. If someone claims otherwise, you should ask what are their sources; if their source is Haining's book, you should check his sources ... all of which don't exist ... Haining's book was an elaborate hoax ... of course, if you know otherwise and have proof, email me at lee@victorianlondon.org ... I'd love to hear from you. Posted on Jul 01 2008 12:30

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Caroline. said...

I love the new version of Sweeney Todd and am fully satisfied with knowing he actually did exist, however disturbing that may be. =] Posted on Jun 30 2008 16:41

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Becky said...

First of all, let me say that the new Sweeney Todd musical with Johnny Depp is absolutely brilliant and is one of if not the best movie I have ever seen. It really sets the right mood for the overall plot of the film and I must say Tim Burton is a directorial genious. Also, Johnny Depp was the absolute perfect choice to play Sweeney. He just has that crazed barber look. Anyways, onto my point. I've done some serious digging over the last few weeks and in fact Sweeney Todd DID exist. He was born on October 26, 1748 in Stepney, London. He became a cutlers apprentice when he was about 12 or 13 years old but his employer was convicted of larsony and young Mr. Todd was throw in jail. (which was quite odd for the time considering children were hung for even pickpocketing a handkerchief) Afterwards, he became a travelling 'gypsy' barber if you will and this is where he made his first kill. When he was 37, he paid 125 euros for a shop on Fleet Street (which still exists in London) and started his own barber shop. He even had a chair similar to the one depicted in the movie except he never did any of his killings upstairs. What would happen was his clients would lean back in the chair and fall 2 stories into the basement and be killed on impact and if they were not, Sweeney would rush down stairs and slit their throats. Also, to allieviate suspicion, on the underside of his trap door, there was another barber chair, so two chairs would just rotate around so there would always be one in the shop. He would loot the dead bodies and throw them inside the old tombs in the secret passages below his shop. But, his underground graveyards soon began to become overpopulated and within this time he met the REAL mrs. lovett. (there is a widespread debate whether her first name was Margery or Sarah but its been concluded that it was most likely Margery) Sweeney began to butcher his clients after death. He would skin them, strip the flesh from their bones and take their organs, grind them up and then give them to Mrs Lovett through a revolving wall in the back of her shop so she could bake them into meat pies and sell them to her customers. After over 160 murders, the pair was caught. Mrs. Lovett was thrown in prison but before she was hanged, she poisoned herself. Sweeney was tried, convicted and hanged for his crimes infront of a audience consisting of thousands upon thousands of people. So Sweeney Todd DID actually exist along with Mrs. Lovett and the infamous meat pies. Posted on Jun 25 2008 05:30

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moany sod said...

Looking on the internet there is no type of fact saying if Sweeney Todd was real or not however there is no indication of him being fiction so who knows I hope it turns out to be prooven as fact because it will be a facinating part of history Posted on Jun 11 2008 14:58

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ann said...

i love this film totaly amazing Posted on Jun 02 2008 01:26

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Me! said...

I think the film was really good, i like the music and i thought Johnny Depp was quite a good singer, but i didn't really want to read about who wrote the play, i was told that the story was true and that the barber was found out when someone found a finger in one of the pies. Posted on May 31 2008 12:26

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Elizabeth said...

I think that the movie was great! I have it and watch it over and over two thoms up! Posted on May 28 2008 18:10

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Befff+Hannah said...

We fink sweeney todd is well mint !! hes a propa beast Posted on May 21 2008 09:26

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caleb said...

Sweeney is based on true event.(to the person who first posted) In fact, if you were to go to Fleet St.,if the still be the name, then you will see the resteraunt it has become. They have Todd's chair outside, you can even look up the legal report on his crimes, he said to kill almost 160 people. Search engines hit key words so try Sweeney Todd History and you shall get what you want. Posted on May 16 2008 19:23

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Hannah said...

Extremely interesting to hear about the origins of the story of Todd. I was told by somebody that it was based on a true story so it's interesting to know that is not the case. Posted on May 14 2008 14:24

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angelica said...

i hated the fact that im doing reserch on the legend of sweeny todd and all you could give me is some random ass crap about the dude who wrote the dumb ass play the srting of perals i wanted some hard facts about him and that is all no shit about the gay ass play Posted on May 13 2008 18:41

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