Sweeney Todd

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For other uses of the name Sweeney, see Sweeney

Sweeney Todd is a fictional barber and serial killer, appearing in various English-language works starting in the mid-19th century. In these stories, and in more recent theatrical works, he cuts his victims' throats with a razor, and has his friend and accomplice, Margery Lovett, bake the carcasses into meat pies.

According to some researchers, in 1785 a barber actually did murder many customers and bake them into meat pies.

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Early history

Todd first appeared in a penny dreadful called The People's Periodical, in issue 7, dated November 21, 1846. The story in which he appeared was called "The String of Pearls: A Romance" and was probably written by Thomas Prest who created a number of other gruesome villains. He tended to base his horror stories on grains of truth, sometimes gaining inspiration from real crime reports in The Times. However an episode in the legend of Saint Nicholas may represent yet an even earlier version. This episode, which likely developed in the eleventh century, sees three clerks seeking accommodations for the night. In the night, their host murders them and, at the advice of his wife, decides to dispose of the evidence by baking the clerks into meat pies. The saint eventually resurrects the young scholars.

The cannibalistic trait of the story goes back as far as the myth of Agamemnon and repeated every Sunday in the transubstantiation ritual of the Catholic church, while the moralistic symbolism of eating one’s guests appears outside the bible in social satire such as Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. The myth’s imagery of meat pies made from people is almost certainly an allusion to the finale of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and the original Roman on which it was based. There is thought to have been a Jacobin barber who cut the throats of his customers during the French Revolution, though for politics rather than profit. Likewise, the 17th Century Scottish figure Sawney Bean led a family of thieves who are believed to have feasted on their victims.

"The String of Pearls" was made into a play in 1847 by George Dibdin Pitt and opened at the Hoxton Theatre, with the subtitle "The Fiend of Fleet Street" and billed as 'founded on fact'. It was something of a success, and the story spread by word of mouth and took on the quality of a legend, often told as if it were true.

Some, including playwright Christopher Bond and other the propionates of the Stephen Sondheim 1979 musical, insist that Sweeney Todd is “pure fiction” that was invented by the London tabloid newspapers. Though crime historians, such as those on the CourtTV website, would disagree with these dramatists, asserting that Thomas Prest’s articles were factual and that Sweeney Todd was a man of flesh, the son of silk-makers, who was hanged in Newgate prison on January 25, 1802. These researchers are confident that there is enough documentation to support that a person named Sweeney Todd owned a barbershop at 186 Fleet Street from 1785-1800. Further that he committed multiple murders, as low as 13 and upwards of 160 by some accounts, with a female accomplice by the surname of Lovett who was a widow and is believed to have owned the Bell Yard bakery near Todd’s shop. Todd’s murders were uncovered by Sir Richard Blunt after the parishioners of St. Dunstan’s Church complained of smells coming from the catacombs beneath, which were believed to have connected the cellars of Todd’s barbershop and Lovett’s bakery. Unlike her murder in the plays, it is believed that Lovett’s arresting officers informed the bakery patrons of her suspected crimes resulting in a crowd nearly lynching her, but Lovett lived to poison herself in Newgate prison awaiting hanging. At trial, the one murder Todd is convicted of is that of missing sailor, Francis Thornhill, whose pearl necklace Todd later pawned. So then the Prest’s String of Pearls story could be a sensationalised version of these 'true crimes.'

A film version of this story was made in 1936, called Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, starring Tod Slaughter in the title role.

Various versions of the tale were staples of the British music hall for the rest of the century.

"Sweeney Todd, The Barber" is a song which assumes its audience knows the stage version and claims that such a character in real life was even more remarkable. Stanley Holloway, who recorded it in 1956, attributed it to R. P. Weston, a song writer active from 1906 to 1934.

The phrase "Sweeney Todd" is also Cockney rhyming slang for the Flying Squad, giving rise to the shortened form "The Sweeney" (the British 1970's Thames Television TV police show The Sweeney took the name from this form).

In the British Army during World War II, soldiers named Sweeney were routinely nicknamed "Todd," and Todds known as "Sweeney", after the well-known story.

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Modern history

The British playwright Christopher Bond wrote a 1973 play titled Sweeney Todd.

Stephen Sondheim composed the musical theatre play Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with book by Hugh Wheeler and based on the Bond play. The character of Margery Lovett was renamed Nellie Lovett for this version of the story. Sondheim called it a "musical thriller" and (due to its sparse non-sung dialogue) "virtually an opera". This modern example of grand guignol originally appeared on Broadway in 1979 starring Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou. A smaller-scale 1989 revival at Circle in the Square starred Bob Gunton and Beth Fowler. It was revived again in October, 2005 and is currently playing on Broadway.

The musical was televised twice. In 1982 a full-scale production featuring the national touring cast aired and won three Emmys. This version starred Lansbury and George Hearn, who took over the role of Sweeney on Broadway after Len Cariou's departure. The second was a concert version presented on PBS in 2000, starring Hearn and Patti LuPone and directed by Lonny Price.

In 2004 John Doyle directed a revival of the musical at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, which subsequently transferred to the West End's Trafalgar Studios and then the New Ambassadors Theatre. Without an orchestra, the actors themselves played the score. This production marked the first time in nearly ten years that Sondheim had been presented in the commercial West End. The production transferred to Broadway in 2005, with a cast headed by Tony Award winners Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone. It is currently playing at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.

In his 1993 book Sweeney Todd, the horror and crime story writer Peter Haining argues that Sweeney Todd was a historical figure committing his crimes around 1800, citing a number of sources. However, his claims have not been widely accepted, and other investigators have been unable to locate some of the sources he cites.

In 1998, Ben Kingsley and Joanna Lumley starred in the John Schlesinger-directed The Tale Of Sweeney Todd, a television movie commissioned by Sky for which Kingsley received a Screen Actors Guild Best Actor nomination.

Sweeney Todd is a major villain in the musical comedy "Sherlock Holmes and the Invaders from Mars".

A BBC television drama version with a screenplay written by Joshua St Johnston and starring Ray Winstone and Essie Davis was broadcast on BBC One on 3 January 2006. In 2005, a Broadway revival opened. A film version of the story directed by Sam Mendes is in the works, slated to be released circa 2008 according to IMDB.

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