Historic Crime : Sweeney Todd - Man or Myth?

By Mark Gribben

Publicity photo of BBC actors from new production

The new BBC horror film brings back to life the demon barber once again. Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett gives this movie very good reviews. "Ray Winstone brings Sweeney Todd, the mythical demon barber of Fleet Street made famous in Stephen Sondheim's 1979 Broadway musical, vividly and scarily to life."  According to Bennett, supporting actors Essie Davis as Mrs. Lovett, Tom Hardy as a young Bow Street runner, David Bradley as Todd's father and David Warner as magistrate Fielding "do exceptional work to match that of Winstone, who gets behind the eyes of a madman to reveal hauntingly how he might have become that way."
"Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd
His skin was pale and his eye was odd
He shaved the faces of gentlemen
Who never thereafter were heard of again
He trod a path that few have trod
Did Sweeney Todd
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street."
"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" By Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim

In the introduction to Stephen Sondheim's musical thriller Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, playwright Christopher Bond begins by telling readers "Sweeney Todd is pure fiction." For two centuries theater-goers and penny dreadful fans have been thrilled with the exploits of Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber who dispatched his customers with a flick of the razor and then had his lover serve up the remains in a tasty meat pie, but few gave much thought to whether or not it was a true story.
Long before there was Freddy Krueger, or even Jack the Ripper, there was the legend of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and most readers assumed it was just that — legend. Bond's statement that Sweeney Todd is pure fiction is correct in one respect: the Sondheim musical, which has played to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, is a fictional account of the life of Sweeney Todd.
Sondheim, who penned the music and lyrics, and playwright Hugh Wheeler adapted an earlier work by Bond, who tailored yet another (much) earlier work by one George Dibdin-Pitt. The melodrama by Pitt had its foundation in a contemporary account of Todd's arrest, trial and execution. Bond asserts while Fleet Street was the home of many unstable and unsavory characters over the years, "no one has ever succeeded in finding a shred of evidence as to the existence of a Demon Barber thereabouts."
That's why Bond is a playwright, not an investigator.

The Real Sweeney Todd

Throat cut scene from the play

The Demon Barber Sweeney Todd is the English bogeyman: the character older children call upon to frighten their friends and younger children. Unruly youngsters are cautioned against misbehaving with threats of being attacked by Sweeney and served up in a meat pie.
To most people, the Demon Barber who used a trap door and trick chair to slaughter his clients was the stuff of urban legend. After all, the events connected with his story are almost unbelievable. His exploits prey upon very common human fears: being attacked while vulnerable, and being served up as food or unknowingly consuming someone else. Who hasn't sat in the chair and felt a shiver as the barber or hair dresser takes out that straight razor, sharpens it on the strop and then applies it to the back of the neck? Or taken a bite of a meal and wondered just what the origin of the hair in the hamburger was? So it was for years, as the legend of Sweeney Todd was passed on from generation to generation, people wrote off the story as pure fiction.
But most myths and legends have a basis somewhere in truth, and Sweeney Todd is no different. There really was a mad barber, he really did use a trapdoor and straight razor to rob and kill customers, and most did end up as filling for meat pies. Extensive, painstaking research by British author Peter Haining has shown this without a doubt. Todd's life and exploits are not nearly as romantic as Sondheim would have us believe, but then who would pay to see a movie or musical about a psychopathic mass murderer unless there was more to the story?
What follows is the true story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. There is little romantic or even melodramatic about the life and times of Sweeney Todd. He was an amoral, bitter man who lusted for money and was not averse to killing to get it. 

By Mark Gribben

The Great Pit

"There's a hole in the world
Like a great black pit
and the vermin of the world inhabit it
And its morals aren't worth
what a pig could spit
And it goes by the name of London."


"No Place like London" by Stephen Sondheim from Sweeney Todd
Life was cheap in 18th century London. As the industrial revolution gathered steam and refugees from the shires flocked to the great city in search of work, the city, which was still reeling from the recent plague years, was unprepared, civilly and morally, for the great influx of population. Poverty and decadence were widespread, and the separation between the classes was distinct.
For all intents and purposes, there were three classes of people in London at the beginning of the industrial revolution: the gentry, who included those with land and title, the merchants, or shop and factory owners, and the working class, which was by far the largest of the three classes. Within the working class were those who worked either in the factories or stores, and those who subsisted through service to the other classes. Beneath all of these was the underclass of beggars, thieves, and prostitutes and common criminals. Movement between classes was rare, except in a downward spiral, and many working class people were forced by situations into the beggar and criminal underclass.

London's poor street

Although the city had managed to survive the late 17th century plague, disease was prevalent in London as sanitary conditions in the growing municipality were less than ideal. The Thames River was considered the dirtiest river in Europe: raw sewage and industrial waste was dumped into the street without second thought. Smallpox, plague, fever and consumption were the most common causes of death — not including accident.
In an effort to survive, whole families, including children, would work for just pennies a day in the mills and factories that had sprung up around the city. Tenements housing dozens of families in small apartments dotted the landscape creating a dismal scene of poverty and chaos. Thieves, ruffians and "sturdy beggars" plagued the streets of the capital, and no one dared walk the streets at night, for fear of his life.
Charles Dickens summed up life for the working class and London in general in Oliver Twist: "The street was narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours... Drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth; and from several of the doorways, great ill-looking fellows were cautiously emerging, bound, to all appearance, on no very well-disposed or harmless errands."

Bloody Business

The English have always had an ambivalent attitude toward law enforcement. The common law, on which society was based, was merely a code of laws based on the mores of the time, and the regents were loathe to codify offenses in writing. London was a criminal's heaven, as it was the responsibility of the victim to catch and bring suit against the criminal. Since theft was a capital offense for which the accused could be executed, criminals were just as likely to kill their victims as spare them, as the penalty for murder was also hanging and the dead couldn't testify.
Britain's first attempt at formal law enforcement began in the age of King Edgar toward the end of the 10th century. Edgar divided the country into various shires and placed a lower nobleman in charge of keeping the King's Peace. These shire reeves, as they were first called (later shortened to sheriff), proved no match for the country's lawlessness, and in fact, like the Sheriff of Nottingham of the Robin Hood legend, contributed to the general corruption. Much later, the duty of law and order was assigned to the military, which put "Masters of the Horse," or constables, on the scene to mete frontier justice. These constables were proven ill-equipped to handle the unruly natives.
After the Restoration of Charles II, the London constables were replaced with "Old Charlies," pensioned military men who patrolled the streets of the city at night. For two hundred years, Old Charlies incurred the wrath of London's underworld, and demonstrated their inability to catch criminals or even thwart crime. At the end of the 1600s, Parliament decided it takes a thief to catch a thief and passed the Reward System, which offered a 40 pound bounty for capturing a thief. This prompted a huge influx of thieves turning in other thieves, and led to the rise of Jonathan Wilde, London's master thief, as the chief law enforcement officer in the city.
Wilde was employed by the city to capture thieves and return property to its rightful owner. He took the system and ran with it, charging finder's fees and creating an extortion racket that required property owners to share a portion of the recovered loot with him. He created the Office of Lost and Stolen Property within the Marshal's portfolio and became a multimillionaire until an embarrassed Parliament shut him down in 1725. For his malfeasance in office, Wilde was hanged.
In 1748, Henry Fielding, who had been forced by pressure from Parliament to abandon his successful role as author, playwright and social critic, was named court justice for Middlesex and Westminster and took offices at No. 4 Bow Street. He hired a number of strapping men to assist him in bringing law and order to the area, and created the city's first paid, professional police force.  The Bow Street force was able to respond to a reported crime in around 15 minutes, and for this, they acquired the nickname "Bow Street Runners."
But they were clearly shoveling against the tide. At no time did the Bow Street Runners comprise more than 15 men, and at the time of its foundation an estimated 30,000 people made their living through larceny, writes H. Paul Jeffries in Bloody Business, a fascinating history of Scotland Yard.

Book cover: Bloody Business

"Londoners lived in a world where violence, disorder and brutal punishments were still part of the normal background of life," said Dorothy George in 1930.
This was the world into which Sweeney Todd was born in 1748.

By Mark Gribben

Sweeney's World

"His voice was soft, his manner mild
He seldom laughed but he often smiled
He'd seen how civilized men behave
He never forgot and he never forgave
Not Sweeney
Not Sweeney Todd
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street..."
"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" By Stephen Sondheim.
Sweeney Todd was the only child of a pair of silk industry workers who labored in their home in the slum of Stepney. His parents were both alcoholics who placed a desire for gin above everything else in life, and Sweeney quickly learned where he ranked in order of importance to his parents.

Drawing of Gin Lane

He wasn't alone in this regard. Gin, which had recently been introduced to England from the Netherlands, was increasingly becoming the true opiate of the masses. William Hogarth, whose etchings frequently took on a moralistic tone, reveals the upper-class attitude toward the liquor in his artwork, Gin Lane, which features a half-naked drunken woman oblivious to her child, who is falling head first to the ground out of her arms. In the background of Gin Lane, buildings crumble from disrepair, and the devil operates the local pawnshop, which, along with the undertaker's, represents the only thriving businesses in the district. An emaciated, half-dead skeleton of a man sits in a drunken stupor across from his inebriated wife.
Made from cheap corn and fermented juniper berries, gin was partly responsible for the rising crime and lower life-expectancy in London, where gin mills frequently advertised "drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two pence, clean straw provided." Beer, wine and sherry were much too expensive for the laboring classes, but Hogarth, in the antithesis to his Gin Lane etching, created another artwork, which shows happy, healthy beer drinkers in a clean, safe neighborhood where the only ramshackle shops are, of course, the undertaker and pawn broker.
"Gin was said to be the drink of the more sedentary trades," wrote David Hughson in his 1806 History of London. "It was essentially a disease of poverty, so cheap, so warming and brought such forgetfulness of cold and misery."
Colin Wilson reports that in the year following Sweeney Todd's birth, eight million gallons of gin were consumed in England, with Londoners responsible for 14 gallons each. As gin consumption increased, so did crime and cruelty. "Pity was a strange and valuable emotion," wrote Christopher Hibbert in The Roots of Evil. "Unwanted babies were left out in the streets to die or were thrown into dung heaps or open drains; the torture of animals was a popular sport. Cat-dropping, bear-baiting and bull-baiting were as universally enjoyed as throwing at cocks."

An Unhappy Childhood

Sweeney Todd obviously did not enjoy a happy childhood, which ended all-too-quickly when he was forced to go to work helping his family load silk threads onto bobbins for the clothing mills. The Todds would never be able to afford the clothes they were making. Flax and wool, not silk, formed the basis for their wardrobes. And their wardrobes, meager as they were, were all the Todd family owned. "The poverty and distress of some of these people is inconceivable; very generally a family in every room with very little bedding, furniture or clothes. The few rags on their backs comprised the principal part of their property," a contemporary writer said about the silk industry workers.

Tower of London

Young Sweeney grew up in the shadow of the infamous Tower of London, which in his youth had been converted into a museum and the Royal Zoo. Haining reports that Sweeney spent as much time as possible in the tower, where he was fascinated by the displayed instruments of torture, the stories shared by Tower workers, as well as by the cruelty which the zookeepers inflicted on their imprisoned pets. His penchant for violence was further enhanced during the 1758 Silk Workers Riots, where impoverished workers infuriated over the importation of cheap calico, went on the warpath and attacked women wearing the inexpensive cotton cloth imported from India.
By all accounts, contemporary and historic, Sweeney was loved by his mother, beaten and ignored by his father. His mother's affections, however, weren't returned: "I was fondled and kissed and called a pretty boy," he testified in court. "But later I used to wish I was strong enough to throttle her. What the devil did she bring me into this world for unless she had plenty of money to give me so that I might enjoy myself in it?"
The defining moment in young Sweeney's life occurred when he was 12 or 13 years old. It was one of the coldest winters on record in London, and hundreds of poor people were freezing to death in their homes and on the streets. For his parents, the call of the gin mills was stronger than their dislike of cold, and one evening they went out and left Sweeney Todd alone at home. They never returned.
It was unlikely that they knowingly abandoned their only child; Haining supposes that they went out in search of alcohol and either found it and froze to death or died trying to find a drink. In his interrogation following his arrest, Sweeney Todd gave this account of his birth and family: "The church I was christened at burnt down the day after, and all the books burned. My mother and father are dead, and the nurse was hanged and the doctor cut his throat."
How the young boy managed to survive is a mystery, and the next records pertaining to Sweeney Todd show that the youngster was turned over to the local parish, which was charged with finding apprenticeships for orphans.

Apprentice Arrested

"You t'ink-a you smart
you foolish-a boy
Tomorrow you start
In my-a employ!
You unner-a-stan'?
You like-a my plan —?"

Pirelli the Barber in "Sweeney Todd" by Stephen Sondheim.
History would have been much different if the parson had found a different tradesman in need of an apprentice in the weeks following the disappearance of Sweeney Todd's parents. Somehow, the Bloody Blacksmith of Bowler Street doesn't have the same ring to it as the Demon Barber. But shortly after he became a ward of the court, Sweeney was turned over to a cutler, the trade responsible for, among other things, manufacturing and sharpening knives and razors.
Under the sign of the "Pistol and C" in Great Turnstile, Holborn, the aptly named John Crook had set up shop, fashioning any number of articles from backgammon tables to gunpowder, but specializing in razors. Apprentices in the 18th century were little more than slaves to their masters, and foul treatment at the hands of the teacher was the norm. The students lived in disheartening poverty, and those orphans who had no one to stand up for them, were most cruelly used.
"Any person, master or journeyman, man or woman, housekeeper or lodger, who would undertake to provide food, lodging and instruction, could take an apprentice," wrote Dorothy George. "All the earnings of the apprentice, whether they were for the master or a third person, became the property of the master."
A report issued by the government around the time of Todd's apprenticeship to Crook, reveals a common practice: "The master may be a tiger in cruelty... (and) few people take much notice. The greatest part of those who now take poor apprentices are the most indigent and dishonest, and it is the fate of many a poor child, not only to be half-starved and sometimes bred up in no trade, but to be forced to thieve and steal for his master, and so is brought to the gallows into the bargain."
Young Sweeney Todd almost fell into that common trap, when two years after he joined Crook's shop he was arrested and convicted of petty larceny. The details of the crime are scarce, whether Crook was the victim or co-conspirator was never recorded. Sweeney could have walked the steps to the hangman's noose for a theft conviction, but since he was just 14 years old, the judge at Old Bailey took pity on the orphan and sentenced him to five years in Newgate Prison. The mercy shown to Sweeney Todd was, as noted above, unusual. Children trained as pickpockets were hanged for as little as the theft of a handkerchief, and any kind of shoplifting was punishable by death.

Newgate Prison

Punishment and repentance, not reform and rehabilitation were the watchwords of the British penal system at the time. Faced with mounting crime, authorities struck back with cruelty. It was thought that punishment should be a deterrent, so harsh penalties for minor offenses were common. Once executed, criminals were turned over to "barber-surgeons" for dissection, and they often faced cruel torture before being hanged. Burning them with hot irons and breaking them on the rack were soon abandoned, however, because there were far too many criminals to do this effectively. Later, gibbets were erected with iron cages in which the rotting bodies of executed criminals could serve as a warning to others, and it was not unusual to dump the criminal's body on the doorstep of the victim to show that justice had been done, Wilson reports!

Drawing of a Prisoner in cell at Newgate Prison

Newgate Prison was a bleak, forbidding place on London's west side; its location is now the site of the Criminal Courts building, known as Old Bailey. It housed prisoners of all types, from child pickpockets to elderly procuresses. In keeping with the community's theory of corrections, Newgate was not designed to rehabilitate anyone. The prison was rife with corruption, and only those convicts who had access to money could count on any humanitarian gestures on the part of their jailers. To society, the prisoners were little more than zoo animals. It was a common practice in the 18th century for Londoners to pay a three shilling entrance fee for a chance to see the wretched inmates in their 9 by 7 foot cells. Dickens, who was one of the tourists to Newgate, was so taken with the young convicts he encountered that he was inspired to write Oliver Twist.
In the prison, Sweeney Todd managed to convince the prison barber, a convict himself, that his previous apprenticeship as a cutler would make him an ideal soap-boy for the barber. It was necessary for the orphan to find some means of support in the prison, for convicts were required to pay bribes to their guards for even the simplest necessities. Someone with no money was likely to soon find himself naked and starving in Newgate.
Plummer the barber, who was four years into a sentence for embezzlement when Sweeney Todd was imprisoned, had found a niche in the prison society, thanks to the large number of well-to-do prisoners who still enjoyed a smooth shave now and then. He accepted Sweeney Todd as his apprentice and shared some of his meager income. One of Plummer's duties was to shave the prisoners slated for execution, and Sweeney Todd would often help in this job. The pair hit it off well, both were unscrupulous and dishonest, and Sweeney Todd learned not only the barber's trade from Plummer, but how to filch the meager change from the pockets of his reclining customers.
How often the bitter and angry young Sweeney Todd must have longingly eyed the bared throats of his customers and imagined the sleek razor slicing through the skin. As he passed his formative years behind the dark stonewalls of Newgate Prison, his hatred toward "his betters" grew and he resolved to even the score once he was a free man.

First Blood

"His needs were few, his room was bare
A lavabo and a fancy chair
A mug of suds and a leather strop
An apron, a towel, a pail and a mop
For neatness he deserves a nod
Does Sweeney Todd."
"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" by Stephen Sondheim
Released from prison when he was 19, Sweeney Todd now had a trade to practice and revenge against society to seek. He first set up shop as a "flying barber," one of the city's countless gypsy tradesmen who practiced their craft wherever they could find space. Flying barbers guarded their territory jealously, and contemporary newspapers frequently reported episodes of territorial battles ending in bloodshed.

Souvenir Booklet for Sweeney Todd play

It was during Sweeney's time as a flying barber that circumstantial evidence points to the so-called demon barber committing his first murder. Although there is no record of Sweeney Todd ever getting married, Haining was able to find reports that the barber had shacked up with a woman of reportedly loose morals. Todd was apparently a jealous suitor, for one afternoon, when a drunken cavalier came to him for a shave and reported having experienced the favors of a woman matching the description of Todd's lover, the demon barber used his razor as a weapon for the first time.
"My first 'un was a young gent at Hyde Park Corner," Todd would later confess. "Slit him from ear to ear, I did."
The London papers reported the murder: "A most remarkable murder was perpetrated in the following manner by a journeyman barber that lived near Hyde Park Corner, who had been jealous of his wife...A young gentleman, by chance coming into the barber's shop to be shaved and dressed, and being in liquor, mentioned having seen a fine girl in Hamilton Street, from whom he had had certain favours the night before, and at the same time describing her person. The barber, concluding this to be his wife, and in the height of frenzy, cut the young gentleman's throat from the ear to ear and absconded."
Sweeney Todd managed to escape the Bow Street Runners and was never brought to justice for his crime. The event, however, ended his relationship with the young woman, and he clearly had to practice his trade elsewhere for a while.

Fleet Street Shop

Several years after this first murder, Sweeney Todd had managed to scrape together enough capital to buy a shop on Fleet Street near Temple Bar, where the Strand and Fleet Street intersect. The choice of Fleet Street for a barbershop was unusual, for it was not the section of town where barbers normally practiced their craft. However, Todd probably was unable to afford a shop in the more gentrified sections of London, and being one of the few barbers on Fleet Street ensured less competition.
Early maps of London show that St. Dunstan's and Sweeney Todd's shop were on the north side of Fleet Street, just a few blocks away from the Royal Courts of Justice. Fetter Lane curved in from the east, and Chancery Lane came in from the west, providing a narrow triangular shape to the block where Sweeney's shop was located. One block over from Chancery Lane lay Bell Yard, which intersected the Temple Bar and provided a perpendicular demarcation between Fleet Street and The Strand.

A typical cavern under Fleet Street

The church next door to Todd's shop had been rebuilt several times prior to 1785, and had one time occupied more land on the narrow block. Beneath the church lay forgotten and seldom used tunnels, some of which served as catacombs for long dead parishioners. One of these tunnels fortuitously ran on a 45-degree angle beneath the church, passing under Chancery Lane between Bell Yard and Fleet Street. Somewhere, Todd had learned of these tunnels, whether it was before or after he purchased the lease on 186 Fleet Street will never be known.
Fleet Street would later be known as the heart of London's famed newspaper community, but when Sweeney Todd rented his shop there in 1785 it was a haven for gin drinkers, harlots and cut-throats. Temple Bar was already a historic site by the time Todd set up shop within spitting distance of the landmark. The bar marked the western edge of the city of Augusta, little more than an old Roman military camp, which later became known as Londinium and later, of course, London. The location was the site of several churches, and a huge edifice erected by the Knights Templar, which gave the area its name. Fleet Street took its name from the filthy Fleet Ditch, which at one time ran parallel to the street and served as a dumping ground for all sorts of waste and garbage. Fleet Ditch still courses through London today, albeit underground in the city's extensive sewer system.
Londoners used the city gates as prisons and spots for punishment, and Temple Bar was no different. At the time Sweeney Todd moved in, the heads of three executed traitors adorned the pikes atop the Bar. Years after the three were beheaded, their grisly remains still attracted visitors, as did the gibbet that held the decaying corpse of the latest executed criminal. Obviously, the gruesome reminders of the folly of a life of crime held no sway with Sweeney Todd.
Three hundred years before Sweeney Todd moved in, Fleet Street was one of the more respectable addresses in London, and was the home to many nobles as well as a large number of churches. In fact, St. Dunstan's was still used for many services involving London's well-to-do. One of the most notable items buried in St. Dunstan's is the head of Sir Thomas More, who was beheaded by Henry VIII for refusing to recognize his marriage to Anne Boleyn. But by the time Sweeney Todd moved in, the nature of the neighborhood had changed drastically.
"The presence in the street of a large number of taverns had much to do with this state of affairs and the defective means of policing the streets made it an easy matter for the lawless to perpetrate their daring deeds, and then to hurry off to the asylum of the contiguous byways and alleys, or to seek shelter in the wilds of Whitefriars," wrote E. Beresford Chancellor in the most complete history of Fleet Street.

The Demon Barber

"His hands were quick, his fingers strong
It stung a little but not for long
And those who thought him a simple clod
Were soon reconsidering beneath the sod"
"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" by Stephen Sondheim.

St Dunstan's Church

At 186 Fleet Street, between St. Dunstan's Church and the Hen & Chicken Court, Sweeney Todd hung out his shingle with the catchy rhyme "Easy shaving for a penny — As good as you will find any." In the window of his shop, Haining reports, Todd made reference to the other, more surgical, duties of a barber. He placed jars with teeth he had pulled and blood he had let, along with wigs made of human hair he had braided. The shop, by all accounts, was a small, dark place, with a single barber chair in the middle of the floor, a bench for waiting customers and a rack filled with combs, scissors and, of course, razors. It was a two-story building, with Todd using the upstairs as his apartment. There was a basement, too, for which Sweeney Todd soon found a nefarious purpose.
One of the most difficult aspects of murder is disposing of the body. Even in 18th century London, where detection and prosecution was a haphazard affair, it wouldn't do to have evidence of homicide lying around. Using the skills he had learned as a cutler's apprentice, Sweeney Todd built the ingenious device that would help him get rid of the evidence of his crimes. Tying in his cutler's engineering skill, his barber training and the knowledge of the underground tunnels, Sweeney cut a square hole in the center of the floor of his shop. He then attached a pipe to the center of the bottom of the cut out, and fastened the pipe to the ceiling of the basement. Then Sweeney fashioned a series of levers that would allow him to withdraw a latch holding the square in place. When the customer reclined in the chair, his weight would cause the trap door to rotate, tumbling the unwitting victim into the basement below. Another barber chair, fastened to the bottom of the trap door would swing up into place, ready for the next victim.

Sweeney Todd & victim from a play

Normally the fall would kill the victim, as it was apparently quite a drop, but sometimes Sweeney would be forced to hurry to the basement and dispatch the victim with a flick of the razor. Having the killing take place outside the one-room shop was convenient and clever, for Sweeney Todd never had to worry about someone walking in on him butchering a victim, and the empty chair which swung into place would alleviate concerns about a barbershop with no barber chair.

An Evil Glimmer

Not surprisingly, there are no pictures of Sweeney Todd, and descriptions of the man himself must be taken with a grain of salt. At the time he practiced his gruesome task, stereotypes abounded, and the physical portrayals in the penny dreadfuls may or may not be accurate. He is described as a scary-looking character with bright red hair and heavy eyebrows that seemed to meet over his nose. He rarely was in good humor, frequently complaining about the high levels of crime, poverty and drunkenness outside his doorway. His eyes had an evil glimmer, the papers reported upon his arrest. "There was also something very sinister about him with his pale face and reddish hair," wrote Gentleman's Magazine in an 1853 retrospective. "At times he was like some hobgoblin, his strange, dark eyes agleam with greed and cunning." Another later account called him "so repulsive in appearance that it is a wonder that...customers...did not immediately flee when the demon in human frame commenced operations."
As a master, Sweeney Todd showed little compassion for the parish boys he took in as apprentices, and in one case, the knowledge of what his master was up to drove one poor lad to insanity and incarceration in the local madhouse. Sweeney Todd drank alone in the taverns, and he was never seen to touch gin, opting instead for the more refined brandy.
By this time, Sweeney Todd was clearly an accomplished murderer.  The Daily Courant, a Fleet Street-published broadsheet, reported a killing in 1785 that almost certainly was committed by Sweeney Todd. "A Cut-Throat Barber," goes the headline in the April 14, 1785 Courant. "A horrid murder has been committed in Fleet Street on the person of a young gentleman from the country while on a visit to relatives in London.
"During the course of a walk through the city, he happened to stop to admire the striking clock of St. Dunstan's Church and there fell into a conversation with a man in the clothing of a barber.
"The two men came to an argument, and of a sudden, the barber took from his clothing a razor and slit the throat of the young man, thereafter disappearing into the alleys of Hen and Chicken Court and was seen no more."

The Outside of Sweeney Todd's Barber Shop

Records indicate only one barbershop between St. Dunstan's and Hen and Chicken Court — that of Sweeney Todd. How he was ever able to escape justice is almost unimaginable; not even the Keystone Cops could have been this ignorant, but somehow, Sweeney Todd evaded the apparently short arm of London Law.

A Third Murder

Sweeney Todd's name is brought up in connection with a third murder shortly after. An apprentice, apparently on an errand for his master, stopped off in Todd's shop for a haircut and let loose with the comment that he was carrying a large sum for his employer. That remark sealed his doom, and although the master came looking for the boy in Todd's barbershop, no trace of the boy was ever found and Sweeney Todd was not made to answer for that crime.
Later, another man who was seen in heated conversation with Sweeney Todd turned up brutally murdered — his throat was slit and his back broken. Again Todd was questioned, but nothing came of it.
Todd later killed a Jewish pawnbroker near his shop, but interestingly the murder was excused as "temporary insanity" — perhaps a bit of anti-Semitism came into play — and once again Todd cheated the hangman.
The only detailed record of a murder occurring in Sweeney Todd's shop is sheer conjecture, but the facts seem to fit and personal property of the victim were found among Sweeney's effects. A beadle, or minor security official at St. Bartholomew's Hospital near Fleet Street, who was notorious for his fastidiousness ducked into Todd's shop on his way to work one evening, as he was unhappy with his appearance. Apparently, during conversation with Todd, the beadle, Thomas Shadwell, proudly displayed his gold pocket watch, which had been given for a number of years' service to St. Bart's. Sweeney Todd felt that the watch was worth killing for and dispatched Shadwell via his trap door. No trace was ever found of Shadwell, but his watch was found in a cupboard in Sweeney's home after his arrest. Shadwell's son later became a minor celebrity, recounting his father's death at the hands of the Demon Barber. Shadwell's death is notable among the various crimes for which Todd was accused simply because it was one of the few where actual details of the events which transpired in the shop were known.
As more people entered his shop never to be seen again, rumors sprang up in the neighborhood about the mad barber, and whispers of what really went on in his shop were passed from gossip to gossip. No one ever thought to contact the Bow Street Runners, however. "It was true that all sorts of unpleasant rumours and surmises began to be whispered regarding him, but no one could prove that he had anything to do with (the) disappearances."

Fresh Meat Pies

"Seems an awful waste
I mean
With the price of meat what it is"
"A Little Priest" by Stephen Sondheim from "Sweeney Todd."
Sweeney Todd's accomplice is even more shrouded in mystery than the murderous barber himself. Her surname was undoubtedly Lovett, but whether her first name was Margery or Sarah remains a mystery. Haining argues in favor of Margery, as most of the articles written about her use that name. She was less than beautiful, according to articles written at the time of her arrest, and her smile came not from her heart, but was as false as the veal filling in her pies.

Engraving of Mrs Lovett

Mrs. Lovett was a widow, whose first husband had died under mysterious circumstances and no one was ever able to place her in Sweeney Todd's presence in public. The pair were lovers, though, and apparently their passions were fulfilled after a successful murder and butchering job. She liked the finer things in life, considered herself better than her working class background, and used her portion of the profits to furnish silk sheets and fine furniture in her apartment above her Bell Yard bakery.
How she met Sweeney Todd is a mystery, but apparently he set her up in her shop in Bell Yard. He had been busy "polishing off" — Sweeney's own play on words - his customers for some time before he brought Mrs. Lovett into the act. Until she started using his victims in her meat pies, Todd had been using the abandoned crypts beneath St. Dunstan's church to hide his handiwork. There, he managed to store the bodies amid the dozens of family crypts that time had all but forgotten. But he was running out of room and needed a new way to dispose of his murder victims.
Thomas Peckett Prest was the first author to write the tale of Sweeney Todd and Margery Lovett shortly after their arrest and trial. He had worked on Fleet Street and was familiar with Lovett's two-story pie shop. In the basement of the shop was the bakery, and a false wall could be opened to reveal the catacombs behind. It was through this false wall that Todd would apparently deliver his ghastly pie fillings. Prest described the shop this way: "On the left side of Bell Yard, going down from Carey Street, was, at the time we write of, one of the most celebrated shops for the sale of veal and pork pies that London had ever produced. High and low, rich and poor, resorted to it; its fame had spread far and wide; and at twelve o'clock every day when the first batch of pies was sold there was a tremendous rush to obtain them.

The Runners Close In

"Swing your razor wide, Sweeney
Hold it to the skies
Freely flows the blood of those
Who moralize!"
"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" by Stephen Sondheim.
St. Dunstan's was old and musty, but the smell, which permeated the church and sacristy, was putrid beyond comprehension. They had been burying people in the catacombs there for hundreds of years, and never before had the smell of decay and death been so prevalent. It got so bad that ladies attending the services would require a handkerchief scented with vinegar or perfume in order to sit through the services, and the parson himself was reported to "sneeze in the midst of discourse and to hold to his pious mouth a handkerchief, in which was some strong and pungent essence, for the purpose of trying to overcome the effluvia."
The matter went on for some months before anyone thought to contact the authorities to investigate. At first the church leaders were afraid that some sort of disease was rampant in the facility, and they contacted the London health department (such as it was in the 18th century), but a study of the parishioners and others nearby found no more deaths or sicknesses than normal. At their wits' end, the church fathers sought the help of the Bow Street Runners to begin an investigation. The Beadle of St. Dunstan's, known to history only as "Mr. Otton", was also a constable for the Runners and he took the matter to his chief, Sir Richard Blunt, who had taken charge of the police force after the death of Henry Fielding.
The smell, Otton told Blunt, reminded him of the smell of rotting corpses, but no one had been buried in St. Dunstan's in many years, and the catacombs below the church had been adequately sealed. Blunt and Otton launched an investigation, descending into the bowels of the church and inspecting the vaults they found there. None had been disturbed, although the stench was much stronger in the crypt. The sewers, which ran near the church, were also scrutinized, and they were found to be in working order and not leaking offal into the church. Blunt left the church with a firmer understanding of the problem, but with no idea what the cause might be.
Another Runner was to provide the link between Sweeney Todd and the mysterious stench of St. Dunstan's Church. It seemed that the rumors of the mysterious disappearances of several sailors who vanished after seeking a polishing off at Sweeney's barbershop had started the gossips' tongues wagging, and the constable dutifully reported the chit-chat to Blunt. Sir Richard didn't immediately put Todd together with the smell, but employing the now-common police technique of records investigation, Blunt found that Sweeney Todd had once been accused of theft of a pair of silver shoe buckles. The case had not stood up because the buckles were of a fairly common sort, but the woman who charged the barber with the theft was adamant that her husband, who had mysteriously disappeared one day, had worn the exact same buckles on his shoes.
Sir Richard was savvy enough to assume that where there is smoke, there is fire, and he put Todd's shop under a close watch. In typical bureaucratic fashion, Sir Richard reported his suspicions to his superiors and was given the green light to "use whatever means might be necessary" to solve the mystery. Over the next several months, three Runners watching Sweeney's barbershop reported that men had entered the store for a shave or haircut and had not been seen to leave.  Sir Richard became more convinced that Todd was murdering clients, and that somehow, St. Dunstan's Church was involved. He decided to revisit the vaults, this time with a crew of Bow Street's finest, to get to the bottom of the issue.
Armed with just a compass, walking stick, and oil lanterns, the men descended once again into the fetid stench of the church's crypt. After a few moments of searching they stumbled across the crypt of the Weston family, which had been one of the Demon Barber's favorite dumping grounds. What they found there was reported in the newspapers in gruesome detail: "Piled one upon each other and reaching halfway up to the ceiling, lay a decomposing mass of human remains. Heaped one upon another heedlessly tossed into the disgusting heap any way, lay pieces of gaunt skeletons with pieces of flesh here and there only adhering to the bones. Heads in a similar state of decay were tumbled about, the whole enough to strike such horror into the heart of any man," wrote the Courier in its account of Sweeney Todd's trial.
Coming to the horrible realization that they had finally located the source of the stench, the Bow Street Runners pressed on, following bloodstained footprints until they disappeared at the back of a shop, apparently on Bell Yard. Sir Richard, who was known as an acute thinker, realized that Sweeney Todd was murdering his clients, and what was worse, he was disposing of the evidence by serving the meat in a pie.

A Race Against Time

But still more evidence was needed. There was thought to be no way to identify the remains found in the Weston crypt, and no way to tie the murders to Sweeney Todd and Margery Lovett, save for the gossips on Fleet Street. The Runners would have to move quickly, yet carefully, lest a blatant investigation scare the murderous duo away. There was no requirement for a search warrant at the time, and Sir Richard ordered his men to accompany every customer into Sweeney Todd's barbershop to keep him from practicing his macabre craft until a Runner had a chance to search his apartment for more evidence. Undoubtedly, for the next several days, the Bow Street Runners were the most neatly shaved police force in the world as they kept tabs on the Demon Barber. The chance to search the house came two days after the discoveries beneath the church, and the Runner dispatched to the house was able to locate a veritable treasure trove of booty from Sweeney Todd's apartment. He noted the names and initials found in some of the clothing and jewelry and reported in to Sir Richard.
Wasting no more time, Blunt dispatched a group of Runners to arrest Margery Lovett, and set out with another squad to pick up Sweeney Todd. The arrest of Mrs. Lovett was not without incident. When the Runners arrived at her shop, she was serving some of her ever-present customers and as they learned the horrid contents of their delicious meals, they attempted to lynch Margery Lovett.
"The people who were in the shop spread the news all over the neighbourhood and the place was soon jammed up with a maddened mob. They poured from Fleet Street and Carey Street determined to tear her to bits and hang her on the lamp post in the middle of Bell Yard," reports an anonymous author in an 1878 version of Sweeney Todd's life.
The Runners were able to hurry Mrs. Lovett away in a waiting carriage, and she was taken to a cell in Newgate Prison.
Blunt's arrest of Sweeney Todd, on the other hand, went without incident. The barber was alone in his shop when the Bow Street Runners entered and clapped the handcuffs, or darbies, on the Demon Barber. He was already behind bars in Newgate Prison before any civilians knew he was involved in the horror of Bell Yard.

Margery Cheats the Hangman

"To seek revenge may lead to hell
But everyone does it and seldom as well
As Sweeney
As Sweeney Todd
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street."
"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" by Stephen Sondheim.
Even in a sprawling city like London, news about the goings-on in Bell Yard and Fleet Street spread rapidly by word-of-mouth. The street outside Sweeney Todd's shop was soon packed with the curious and the vengeful, and Bell Yard, which served as a pass-through for lawyers on their way to the court buildings nearby, was made impassable by the sheer number of gawkers who came to peer in the windows of Margery Lovett's once popular pie shop.
The newspapers of the time had a field day with the story, reporting rumors and fact with equal zeal. Sir Richard was considered a hero by the people, and as he continued to gather evidence for the upcoming trial, interest in the work of the Bow Street Runners was diverting much of his attention.
Margery Lovett had wasted no time in confessing her sins to the governor of Newgate Prison. She revealed the entire plot and Sweeney Todd's role in it, "believing herself on the edge of the grave" and wishing to come clean before she was hanged. It was clear by her confession that she intended to take Sweeney Todd with her when she swung from the gallows. But Margery Lovett was to cheat the hangman, and nearly squash the Crown's case against the demon barber.
Acting in the dual role of police and prosecutor, Sir Richard was stunned in December 1801 when he was advised that Mrs. Lovett had poisoned herself in her cell at Newgate. How she came by the poison is unknown, but as a woman of means she might have been able to bribe a jailer, and authorities learned that she had had a delivery of some clothes from her home shortly before she died. Haining surmises that Lovett might have had poison hidden away in the clothes for just such a situation.

The Trial of Sweeney Todd — The Crown

London was abuzz as the trial of Sweeney Todd approached in December 1801. "Scarcely ever in London has such an amount of public excitement been produced by any criminal proceedings as by the trial of Sweeney Todd," wrote the Daily Courant. "So great is the excitement that sober-minded men, who do not see any peculiar interest in the sayings and doings of a great criminal, are disgusted that the popular taste should run that way.
"Be that as it may, the case of Rex v. Sweeney Todd will certainly be one of the trials of the age."
That prescient prediction by the newspaper was held to be true as the trial opened. Sweeney Todd had not been told of the death of Margery Lovett prior to his trial, and when he was informed, he apparently turned pale, "like some great, gaunt ghost."
Todd was actually on trial for just one murder, that a seaman, Francis Thornhill. Despite the large number of bodies and the mountain of evidence found at his home, police could scarcely identify any other victims. Sir Richard had rightly surmised that although the barber was a mass murderer, one slaying would be sufficient to send him to the gallows.
Dressed in a red gown, chain, and white peruke, the attorney general, representing King George III, opened his case. A reporter for the Newgate Calender — the long-serving recorder of criminal behavior in England — dutifully took down the statements.
"Mr. Thornhill had been commissioned to take a certain string of Oriental pearls, valued at 16,000 pounds, to a young lady in London," the prosecutor began.  "He was anxious to fill this request, and as soon as the ship docked, went into the City with the pearls. It appears that upon his route to deliver them, he went into the shop of the prisoner at the bar to be shaved, and no one ever saw him again."
The captain of the ship and a friend of the dead man retraced his route to the city when he failed to show up, and questioned Todd. Sweeney admitted shaving the sailor but said he completed the job and Thornhill went on his way. Col. Jeffrey, the friend of Thornhill remained in London after the ship sailed to Bristol, sure that the string of pearls would soon show up.
"Gentlemen, it did," the prosecutor continued. "It appeared at the Hammersmith residence of Mr. John Mundel who lent money upon securities and it will be deposed that one evening the prisoner at the bar went to this Mr. Mundel and pawned a string of pearls for one thousand pounds."
Describing in graphic details the scene beneath St. Dunstan's Church, the attorney general revealed some of the more horrifying facts of the case of the Demon Barber. "Almost every vault was full of the fresh remains of the dead. (Sir Richard) found that into old coffins, the tenants of which had mouldered to dust, there had been thrust fresh bodies, with scarcely any flesh remaining on them — yet sufficient to produce the stench in the church".
The prosecutor then went on to describe the connecting tunnel between Fleet Street and Bell Yard, and then tied it all together with the evidence found in Sweeney Todd's shop.
"Sweeney Todd's house was found crammed with property and clothing sufficient for 160 people," he said to the stunned courtroom. "Yes, gentlemen of the jury, I said 160 people, and among all that clothing was found a piece of jacket which will be sworn to have belonged to Francis Thornhill."
There was still more evidence, the prosecutor said.
"Is a piece of sleeve enough to convict a man? Wisely, the law says no and looks for the body of a murdered man," he said confidently. "We will produce that proof. For among the skeletons found contiguous to Todd's premises was one which will be sworn to as being that of the deceased Mr. Thornhill."
Colonel William Jeffrey took the stand for the prosecution and told how he had gone in search of Thornhill, and how he later sought the help of the Bow Street Runners. He descended into the catacomb with Sir Richard and a doctor, who removed a bone from a skeleton they found there. Jeffery made his mark upon the bone for identification.
Next up for the prosecution was its star witness, the hero of the hour, Sir Richard Blunt. He told of how the rumors of Sweeney Todd had been brought to his attention and how he had linked Todd with the stench of St. Dunstan's. "After careful inquiry, I found that out of 13 disappearances, no less than ten had declared their intention to get shaved, or their hair dressed, or to go through some process which required them to visit a barber.
"My attention was directed to the peculiar odour in the church and from that moment, I, in my own mind, connected it with Sweeney Todd and the disappearances of the persons who had so unaccountably been lost in the immediate neighborhood of Fleet Street. And in the midst of this, I had formal application made to me concerning the disappearance of Mr. Francis Thornhill, who had been clearly traced to the shop of the prisoner at the bar and never seen by anyone to leave it."
The final witness for the prosecution was Dr. Sylvester Steers, who identified the leg bone found beneath Todd's shop as one belonging to Thornhill. How did he come to this conclusion, the prosecutor asked.
"Mr. Thornhill met with a very unusual and painful accident," the doctor replied. "The external condyle or projection on the outer end of the thighbone, which makes part of the knee joint, was broken off, and there was a diagonal fracture about three inches higher upon the bone. I had the sole care of the case, and although a cure was effected, it was not without considerable distortion of the bone."
"From my frequent examination I was perfectly well acquainted with the case, and I can swear that the bone in the hands of the jury was the one so broken to which I attended."
Forensic evidence such as this had never before been produced in a court trial, and the question of whether the jury, educated men though they might be, would accept it. The evidence of Todd's guilt was certainly apparent if circumstantial evidence was to be believed. The job of the prosecutor would have been made so much easier if Mrs. Lovett had only been alive to testify.

The Trial of Sweeney Todd — The Defense

Now it was the defense's turn to address the jury. The defense counsel, appointed by the court to serve the Demon Barber, quickly went to the bizarre and circumstantial nature of the case against Sweeney Todd. To be sure, establishing innocence in the face of such hatred that the spectators felt for Sweeney Todd would be difficult, at best. But the defense counsel, whose name remains shrouded by the mists of time, gave it his all.
"Instead of evidence, near or remote fixing the deed upon him, we have nothing but long stories about vaults, bad odours in churches, moveable floorboards, chairs standing on their heads, secret passages and pork pies," he began. "Really, gentlemen of the jury, I do think that the manner in which the prosecution has been got up against my virtuous and pious client is an outrage to your common sense."
He then attacked the prosecution's pieces of evidence one by one. First, how could the disappearance of respectable men from their homes have anything to do with Sweeney Todd, he asked. Then, answering his own question, he said "We are told that the respectable men want to get shaved, and that Sir Richard Blunt had a shave several times at my client's shop, yet here he is quite alive and well to give evidence today, and no one will say that Sir Richard is not a respectable man."
And what about the smell in St. Dunstan's? "You might as well say that my client committed felony because this court was not well ventilated!"
The most serious evidence against Sweeney Todd was the disappearance of Francis Thornhill. "Really, this is too bad. Hundreds of people may have seen him come out — and no doubt did so — but they happened not to know him. So just because no one passed the time of day with this man, my client is declared guilty of murder."
As for the bone, the barrister held no account of forensic evidence. "Gentlemen of the jury, what would you think of a man who should produce a brick and swear that it belonged to a certain house?"
Calling the prosecution's case "sophistry" he questioned the death of Margery Lovett. He placed the blame for the murders squarely on her shoulders and said that she accused Sweeney Todd, "a man well-known for his benevolence and piety," out of spite. Then declining to call any witnesses for the defense, he rested his case.
The judge quickly summed up the case for the jury. In the tradition of the time, his summation amounted to almost a restatement of the prosecution's case against Sweeney Todd. Then, he charged the jury to determine the guilt or innocence of the Demon Barber.
The next phase of the trial, deliberation and sentencing, took less than 10 minutes. The jury retired to consider the details of the case and returned a guilty verdict after five minutes. The judge, placing a black cloth atop his white wig, asked Sweeney Todd if he had any words before sentence was passed.
"I am not guilty!" Todd shouted.
"It is now my painful duty to pass upon you the sentence of the law, which is that you be taken from here to a place of execution and hanged by the neck until dead. May Heaven have mercy upon you.
"You cannot expect that society can do otherwise than put out of life someone who, like yourself, has been a terror and a scourge."
On January 25, 1802, in the prison yard at Newgate, Sweeney Todd was strung up on the gallows before a crowd of thousands, where he apparently "died hard." After his execution, his body was given over to a handful of learned "barber-surgeons" where it was dissected. Sweeney Todd ended up, like so many of his victims, as a pile of meat and bones.

A sketch of Sweeney Todd as he goes to the gallows.

The Legend of Sweeney Todd

"He kept a shop in London Town
Of fancy clients and good renown
And what if none of their souls were saved?
They went to their maker impeccably shaved
By Sweeney
By Sweeney Todd
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" by Stephen Sondheim.

Sweeney Todd and the penny dreadfuls

Not long after Sweeney Todd was filleted by the barber-surgeons, the nascent pulp fiction market took hold of his story and, as fiction writers do, began to embellish it somewhat. The first stories that appeared in the one-cent "penny dreadfuls" — the popular true-crime reports of the day — were filled with ghastly accounts of a sub-human monster who used a barber chair and trapdoor to lure unsuspecting clients to their doom.
So-called "Newgate novels," stories with a moralistic turn, which demonstrated the folly of a life of crime, had been popular with the British public since the first true crime report appeared in 1776. That work, The Annals of Newgate, or the Malefactors Register, was prepared at the request of His Majesty's government by the Newgate chaplain and was immensely popular with the masses. Later came The Newgate Calendar, or the Malefactors Bloody Register, which highlighted the crimes of such notables as "Moll Cutpurse, master thief," "Daniel Davis, dishonest postman," Mary Carlton, a.k.a., "The German Princess, adventuress" and "Charles Fox, an offending dustman." Almost everyone in the Newgate Calendar ended up on the gallows.
The stories were often serialized to ensure repeat customers, and were enhanced to provide melodramatic aspects missing in the true account of the case. One of the most popular stories of Sweeney Todd created a love interest for the hapless apprentice. The String of Pearls," by Thomas Peckett Prest, became immensely popular and was quickly adapted for the stage by George Dibdin-Pitt for performance at the Britannia Theatre.
Actors recreate Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett for the stage
For centuries after his demise, Sweeney Todd was reincarnated on British stages around the country, much to the delight of the masses. Most plays were based on Prest's String of Pearls in some form or another, but the villains remained either Sweeney Todd, or in some cases, Margery Lovett.
With the invention of motion pictures, it was only natural that the Demon Barber would move to the screen. His first appearance in film was in a 1920s silent film version of String of Pearls. Haining reports that although no prints of the film remain, the movie, entitled simply Sweeney Todd, was a romantic comedy. Two years later, a serious horror film of Sweeney Todd was produced and in 1936, the Demon Barber had his first speaking role.
One of the main characters of String of Pearls was Tobias, Todd's apprentice, who was apparently modeled after the poor child whom Todd had committed to the asylum. In Pit's play, Tobias escapes thanks to the gin-drunk guards and returns to Fleet Street to avenge himself, expose the villain, capture the string of pearls and win the girl.

A Broadway Salute

Sweeney Todd received a huge boost to his popularity with the creation of Stephen Sondheim's musical thriller, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street," which combines some of Pit's version of String of Pearls with a touch of black humor.
In Sondheim's play, Sweeney Todd is the alias of a man wrongfully accused of a crime and transported to Australia. The barber returns to Fleet Street, only to find that his wife and daughter have disappeared. His wife, the target of the lust of a judge, was driven to insanity, while his daughter was adopted by the judge out of a sense of remorse.
Todd meets up with Mrs. Lovett, who makes "the worst pies in London" and together they plot his revenge against the judge and a Beadle who assisted the judge in his nefarious plans. Made mad by his anger, Sweeney Todd begins killing as many of his customers as possible, which Mrs. Lovett uses for her pies.
Anthony, the hero of the play, falls in love with the ward of the judge, and is determined to reveal the heinous crimes of Sweeney Todd. In classic tragic formula, Sweeney Todd's desire for revenge proves to be his undoing.
The play premiered on Broadway with Angela Lansbury taking the role of Mrs. Lovett and Len Cariou as the Demon Barber. Sweeney Todd was directed by Harold Prince. It won a slew of Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Music, and Best Actor and Actress awards. The musical also won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical. Across the ocean, the musical premiered a year later and won Best Musical Award from the London Standard Drama Awards, and the Society of West End Theatre Awards for best musical and best actor in a musical.
But it is in the streets and playgrounds were Sweeney Todd is best remembered. Anywhere children gather to tell spooky stories and scare each other, the legend of Sweeney Todd is sure to delight. As Anna Pavord of the London Observer wrote in 1979, "Sweeney Todd will never die. We all need bogeymen and he was bogier than most."

By Mark Gribben

Bibliography

Haining, Peter. 1993. Sweeney Todd: The Real Story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. London: Robson Books.
Jeffers, H. Paul. 1992. Bloody Business: An Anecdotal History of Scotland Yard. New York: Barnes and Noble Books.
Nef, John U. 1943. "The Industrial Revolution Reconsidered." Journal of Economic History. Volume 3:1.
Raynor, J.L and G.T. Crook. 1926. The Complete Newgate Calendar. London: The Navarre Society.
Sondheim, Stephen and Hugh Wheeler. 1979 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers.
Wilson, Colin. 2000. The Mammoth Book of the History of Murder. London: Carroll & Graf.
Zito, George V. 1972. "A Note on the Population of Seventeenth Century London." Demography. Volume 9:3.