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From legend to reality

Sweeney Todd, real story

The movie (2007)
Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp), a skilled barber, is falsely charged and sentenced to a life of hard labor in Australia by the corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who lusts after Barker's wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly). Now assuming the alias "Sweeney Todd", Barker returns to London with sailor Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower). At his old Fleet Street lodgings above Nellie Lovett's (Helena Bonham Carter) pie shop, he is told that Lucy was raped by Turpin and poisoned herself with arsenic. Todd's teenage daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) is now Turpin's ward, and like her mother before her is the object of Turpin's unwanted affections. Todd vows revenge, reopening his barber shop in the upstairs flat after his old razors are shown to him by Mrs. Lovett.

While roaming London, Anthony spots Johanna in an upstairs room of a large house singing to her birds, and a beggar woman tells him Johanna's name. Anthony is instantly smitten with her, but is ejected from the Judge's house by Turpin and his associate, Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall). Not discouraged, the sailor becomes determined that the pair will elope. During a visit to the marketplace, Todd denounces a fraudulent hair tonic by faux-Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), and humiliates him in a public shaving contest. Todd becomes impatient while waiting for Beadle Bamford to arrive at his shop; Mrs. Lovett consoles him when Pirelli and his boy assistant Tobias Ragg (Ed Sanders) arrive. Mrs. Lovett keeps Toby occupied downstairs, while in the parlor Pirelli reveals himself to be Todd's former assistant and attempts to blackmail him, demanding half of Todd's earnings or he will reveal his true identity. Instead of giving Pirelli a payoff, Todd beats him with a boiling kettle. He then stuffs Pirelli in a trunk, later slitting his throat upon realizing that he is still alive.

After receiving some advice from the Beadle, Turpin, intending to propose to Johanna, pays a visit to Todd's parlor to groom himself. Recognizing him, Todd relaxes and shaves Turpin while preparing to slit his throat. Before he can do so, they are interrupted by Anthony, who bursts in and reveals his plan to elope with Johanna before he realizes Turpin is there. Turpin leaves enraged, vowing never to return. His chance at revenge missed, Todd has an epiphany, and decides that all of humanity, instead of just Turpin, deserves death, and vents his murderous rage upon his customers while waiting for another chance to kill the judge. He is indiscriminate about his killings, believing that he is punishing the corrupt aristocracy for their exploitation of those below them, while saving the lower classes from their misery. Mrs. Lovett becomes his willing accomplice, suggesting they dispose of the bodies by baking them into pies to improve her business. Todd rigs his barber's chair with a pedal-operated mechanism, which deposits his victims through a trap door into Lovett's bakehouse. As the weeks pass, Todd's murders accumulate (although he is shown sparing a man who brings his wife and daughter). Meanwhile, Anthony begins to search for Johanna, who was sent by Turpin to Fogg's insane asylum as punishment for her refusal to marry him.

The barbering and pie-making business prospers financially, and Lovett takes in Pirelli's young servant boy Toby. With both of the shops being such a success, Mrs. Lovett informs Todd of her plans to move to the seaside. Anthony finally discovers Johanna's whereabouts, and under advice from Todd, he poses as a wig-maker's apprentice, allowing him access to the asylum. Todd comes up with a new plan to lure Turpin back, and has Toby deliver a letter to him telling him where Johanna will be brought when Anthony frees her. Toby has become wary of Todd and tells Mrs. Lovett, unaware of her role in the crimes: he promises to protect her, loving her as a surrogate mother. Beadle Bamford arrives at the barber shop, informing them that neighbors complain of the stink coming out of the chimney. He is murdered by Todd, and Mrs. Lovett informs Todd of Toby's suspicions. The pair search for Toby, whom Mrs. Lovett has locked in the basement bakehouse to keep him out of the way. Toby is nowhere to be found, having hidden in the sewers after seeing the Beadle's body drop into the room from the trap door above, as well as finding fingers in a pie. Meanwhile, Anthony frees Johanna and brings her to the shop in disguise, where she hides herself in a trunk in a corner of the room while Anthony finds a coach.

An insane beggar woman who has been pestering Todd, Lovett and Anthony throughout the film makes her way into the shop. As Todd enters, she claims that she recognizes him. Just then, Turpin's voice is heard. Todd quickly slits the beggar woman's throat and deposits her body through the trap door. As Turpin enters, Todd explains to him that Johanna had repented, and offers a free shave. Todd reveals his true identity to Turpin and stabs him in the neck numerous times before finally slitting his throat and dropping him through the trap door. As Johanna peeks out of the trunk, Todd spots her and prepares to slit her throat as well, not recognizing her as his daughter. A scream from Lovett diverts him to the basement, where she tells him that Turpin had still been alive and tried to grab at her dress before bleeding to death. Viewing the corpses in the light of the bakehouse fire, Todd discovers that the beggar woman was his wife Lucy, whom he had believed to be dead based on Lovett's account of the poisoning. Todd realizes that Lovett knew Lucy was alive, and she attempts to convince Sweeney that she misled him for his own good, confessing she loves him and would be a better wife than Lucy ever was. Todd pretends to forgive her, waltzing maniacally with her around the bakehouse before hurling her into the open furnace and locking her in. He returns to Lucy and cradles her dead body as Toby emerges from the sewer and picks up the discarded razor. Todd appears to hear him and raises his head, allowing Toby to slit his throat. As Toby walks away, Todd bleeds to death over his dead wife, leaving Johanna presumably clear to run away with Anthony and start a new life together.



Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the protagonist of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls (1846-1847). Claims that Sweeney Todd was a historical person are strongly disputed by scholars, although there are possible legendary prototypes, arguably making the story of Sweeney Todd an early example of an urban legend.

In the original version of the tale, Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims by pulling a lever while they are in his barber chair which makes them fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. Just in case they are alive, he goes to the basement and "polishes them off" (meaning he slits their throats with his straight razor). In some adaptations, the murdering process is reversed, with Todd slitting the throats of his customers before they are dispatched into the basement via the revolving trapdoor. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend and/or lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies, and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop. Todd's barber shop is situated at 186 Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan's church, and is connected to Mrs. Lovett's pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage.

The tale surrounding the character became a staple of Victorian melodrama. Later it was the subject of a 1959 ballet by English composer Sir Malcolm Arnold and a Tony award-winning Broadway musical in 1979, by Stephen Sondheim. Sweeney Todd has also been featured in several films, the most recent being 2007's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, based on the 1979 musical, directed by Tim Burton, with Johnny Depp in the title role.

Story versions

The original version of the tale, The String of Pearls, is set in London in 1785 and concerns the strange disappearance of a sailor named Lieutenant Thornhill, last seen entering Sweeney Todd's establishment on Fleet Street. Thornhill was bearing a gift of a string of pearls (of the title) to a girl named Johanna Oakley on behalf of her missing lover, Mark Ingestrie, who is presumed lost at sea. One of Thornhill's seafaring friends, Colonel Jeffery, is alerted to Thornhill's disappearance by his faithful dog, Hector, and investigates his whereabouts. He wants to know what happened to Johanna's lover, Mark Ingestrie. Johanna's suspicions of Sweeney Todd's involvement lead her to dress up as a boy and enter Todd's employment, after his last assistant, Tobias Ragg, has been incarcerated in a madhouse. Eventually, the full grisly horror of Todd's activities are uncovered when the dismembered remains of hundreds of his victims are discovered in the crypt underneath St. Dunstan's church. Meanwhile, Mark Ingestrie, who has been imprisoned in the cellars beneath the pie shop and put to work as the cook, escapes via the lift used to bring the pies up from the cellar into the pie-shop. Here he makes the following announcement to the customers of that establishment:

Ladies and Gentlemen � I fear that what I am going to say will spoil your appetites; but the truth is beautiful at all times, and I have to state that Mrs Lovett's pies are made of human flesh!
Todd then poisons Mrs. Lovett before being apprehended and hanged. For her part, Johanna marries Mark and lives happily ever after.

Sondheim's adaptation

In Stephen Sondheim's 1979 stage musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, based on the 1970 play of the same name by Christopher Bond, Todd is reinvented as a tragic character driven by revenge rather than greed.

The musical establishes that Todd was once Benjamin Barker, a middle class barber, married to Lucy Barker with an infant daughter Johanna. The villainous Judge Turpin wanted Lucy for himself and had Barker arrested on false charges and transported for life to Australia. The play begins 15 years later, when the barber has returned to London, completely transformed by his experiences: “That man is dead. It’s Todd now. Sweeney Todd.”� Mrs. Lovett, a widow, owns the spectacularly unsuccessful meat pie shop below Todd’s old home. She recognises her former neighbor and tells Todd that Lucy poisoned herself after Turpin raped her, and that Turpin adopted baby Johanna as his ward. By the time Todd returns to London, Johanna has become a young woman and falls in love with a sailor, Anthony Hope, with whom she plans to elope.

In the Sondheim musical, Mrs. Lovett takes in an orphan boy, Tobias Ragg, after Sweeney kills Toby's previous master, Adolfo Pirelli, a former assistant of Todd who tries to blackmail him by threatening to reveal Todd's true identity. After Turpin escapes his grasp, Todd swears revenge upon the entire world, resolving to kill as many people as he can; Mrs. Lovett then suggests they turn his victims' remains into pies. Subsequently, Mrs. Lovett's pie shop becomes incredibly successful.


In the musical's climactic scene, Todd finally kills Judge Turpin, as well as a deranged beggar woman � who turns out to be none other than Lucy, Todd's long-lost wife, who had been driven insane. When Mrs. Lovett confesses that she didn't tell him Lucy was still alive because she loves him, he waltzes her around the oven before throwing Mrs. Lovett into the bakehouse oven. As Todd grieves over his wife's body, Toby, gone mad after discovering the secret of the meat pies and Sweeney's murder of Mrs. Lovett (whom he loved like a mother), sneaks up behind him and slashes Todd's throat with Todd's own razor. Todd dies with his wife's body in his arms. Anthony and Johanna � having accidentally witnessed Turpin's murder � return with two policemen, only to find the bakehouse floor littered with dead bodies. The only living soul is Toby, now a raving lunatic, hair white from shock.

Literary history

Sweeney Todd first appeared in a story entitled The String of Pearls: A Romance. This penny dreadful was published in 18 weekly parts, in Edward Lloyd's The People's Periodical and Family Library, issues 7-24, 21 November 1846 to 20 March 1847. It was probably written by James Malcolm Rymer, though Thomas Peckett Prest has also been credited with it. Other attributions include Edward P. Hingston, George Macfarren and Albert Richard Smith. In February/March 1847, before the serial was even completed, The String of Pearls was adapted as a melodrama by George Dibden Pitt for the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton. It was in this alternative version of the tale, rather than the original, that Todd acquired his catchphrase: "I'll polish him off".[6] Neil Gaiman, in a promotional "penny dreadful", identified a number of earlier texts that feed into the Todd story, some dating back to at least the late 17th century.

Another, lengthier, penny part serial was published by Lloyd from 1847/8, with 92 episodes and published in book form in 1850 as The String of Pearls with the subtitle "The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance". This expanded version of the story was 732 pages long. A plagiarised version of this appeared in America c. 1852-53 as Sweeney Todd: or the Ruffian Barber. A Tale of Terror of the Seas and the Mysteries of the City by "Captain Merry" (a pseudonym for American author Harry Hazel (1814-89)).

In 1875, Frederick Hazleton's c. 1865 dramatic adaptation Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street: or the String of Pearls (see below) was published as Vol 102 of Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays.

A scholarly, annotated edition of the original 1846-47 serial was published in volume form in 2007 by the Oxford University Press under the title of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, edited by Robert Mack.

Alleged historical basis

The original story of Sweeney Todd was quite possibly based on an older urban legend. In the novel Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4) by Charles Dickens, published two years before the appearance of Sweeney Todd in The String of Pearls (1846-7), a character called Tom Pinch is grateful that his own "evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many country legends as doing a lively retail business in the metropolis". A similar story, which first appeared in an 1824 publication called The Tell Tale, reported how a barber and wig-maker of the Rue de la Harpe in Paris cut his customers' throats, relieved them of their valuables and then had their bodies made into meat pies, utilising the services of a pastry cook, whose establishment was on the same street.

Claims that Sweeney Todd was a real person were first made in the introduction to the 1850 (expanded) edition of The String of Pearls and have persisted to the present day. In two books, Peter Haining argued that Sweeney Todd was a historical figure who committed his crimes around 1800. Nevertheless, other researchers who have tried to verify his citations find nothing in these sources to back Haining's claims. A check of the website Old Bailey at for "Associated Records 1674-1834" for an alleged trial in December 1801 and hanging of Sweeney Todd for January 1802 show no reference; in fact the only murder trial for this period is that of a Governor/Lt Col. Joseph Wall who was hanged 28 January 1802 for killing a Benjamin Armstrong on 10 July 1782 on the isle of Gorée, West Africa, and the discharge of a Humphrey White in January 1802.

A late (1890s) reference to the urban legend of the murdering barber can be found in the poem by the Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson - The Man from Ironbark

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