Sweeney Todd – the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

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.

Sweeney Todd - Peach Theatre Company

We went with a group of friends to see the Peach Theatre production of Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Brilliance. One of the most stunning pieces of live performance I’ve seen in years. And yes, this includes several metal shows.

In fact, it was so brutal and epic I’ve decided to make Sweeney Todd not only the subject of this week’s metal history, but the theme for the whole week. Yes, pie recipes, cannibalism and blood-splattered theatre are on Steff Metal this week.

We’ve been telling workmates and parentals for awhile about seeing the play, but no one seems to know what it is. The conversation goes a little like this:

Workmate “What are you doing for the weekend, Steff?”

Steff “Oh, a huge group of friends are going to see a play.”

Workmate “That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you’re usually into.”

Steff “Well, it’s a play about a vengeful barber who cuts the throats of his customers and his neighbour bakes their bodies into pies.”

Workmate: “Oh … it sounds EXACTLY the sort of thing you’re into.”

The story of Sweeney Todd first appeared in print in the 1846-47 penny dreadful serial “The String of Pearls”, but it’s based on a much older urban legend. Penny Dreadfuls were serialized fiction booklets churned out on cheap pulp paper during the Victorian period, filled with stories of highwaymen, criminals and ghost stories. They cost a penny each and were aimed at teenage boys. Since a penny a week was quite a lot for a teenage boy, enterprising lads would form clubs to pool resources to buy and share the dreadfuls. Some lads would even buy the whole series and then rent it out to their mates.

“The String of Pearls”, Todd is a barber who – once he has an intended victim sitting in his chair – pulls a lever and sends them toppling back through a trapdoor into the basement of his shop, breaking their necks in the process. If they’re not quite yet dead, he wanders downstairs and polishes them off with his straight razor. Todd’s partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, bakes the victims into pies which she sells in her bakery. One sailor Lieutenant Thornhill, who has disappeared after his visit to Sweeney’s establishment. Thornhill bore a gift for Johanna Oakley on behalf of her lover Mark Ingestrie – thought lost at sea. That gift was a string of beautiful pearls.

Thornhill’s friend, Colonel Jeffery, begins a search for Thornhill, and questions Johanna, who becomes suspicious of Todd and enters under his employment, disguised as a boy, in order to discover what he is doing. She finds hundreds of dismembered bodies beneath the shop, and her lover, Mark, has been imprisoned in the cellar beneath the pie shop and forced to work as the cook. He escapes via the lift used to carry the pies to the shop above, and announces to the customers:

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 poisons Mrs. Lovett, before he is tried and hanged. Johanna and Mark marry and live happily ever after.

The story became so popular it was quickly adapted into a british melodrama. A ballet was written in 1959, and Christopher Bond created a remarkable stage play in 1973. In 1979, Stephen Sondheim wrote a stage musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, which is based on Christopher’s play and is the most popular adaptation of the story performed today. It’s this musical from which the music for Tim Burton’s recent movie adaptation came.

The story is one of betrayal and revenge (rather than greed as in the older tales). Benjamin Barker, a barber, is married to the beautiful Lucy, and they have a daughter Johanna. However, the evil Judge Turpin wants Lucy for himself, so he ships Barker off to Australia on some trumped-up charge and rapes Lucy. Sweeney Todd opens 15 years later, when Barker returns to London, having escaped and changed his name to Sweeney Todd. He goes to his old house and finds Mrs. Lovett, who tells him Lucy is dead and Johanna has become Turpin’s ward.

A former assistant of Todd recognizes him and threatens to blackmail him if Todd doesn’t give him half his barbershop profits. Enraged, Todd kills the man, and Mrs. Lovett adopts Toby, his thick servant. He waits for Turpin to come for a haircut so he can have his revenge with “his little friends” (his razors) but Turpin is scared away by Johanna’s lover, a sailor named Anthony Hope, and vows he will never return to Fleet Street. Thinking he’s lost the chance for his revenge, Sweeney vows to kill as many people as possible, because apparently that makes things all better.

So Sweeney gets his wicked barber chair with his trapdoor, and Mrs. Lovett starts making the victims into pies. Previously known as selling “the worst pies in London”, Mrs. Lovett’s shop becomes extremely successful.

Finally, finally, Sweeney kills Judge Turpin, as well as a crazy beggar woman who he discovers is ACTUALLY his wife Lucy. She wasn’t dead after all. Mrs. Lovett lied to him. She says it’s because she’s in love with him. He throws her into the cooking over. Toby kills Sweeney Todd. Everyone’s bloody dead. In the older productions, the first thrree rows would be bathed in blood.

Some scholars believe Sweeney Todd might be based on an actual person, but the evidence is pretty vague. Peter Haining wrote two books insisting Sweeney Todd was an actual, real live person, living around 1800. However, no other researcher can find any of the evidence Haining cites.

Why is there not a metal version of any of the Sweeney Todd songs? The only metal song I know about Sweeney Todd is by the infamous Saxon “Demon Sweeney Todd”, from Into the Labyrinth. Let;s appreciate it’s brilliance below:

From a 1982 production of Sweeney Todd, starring Angela Lansbury and George Hearn, my favorite piece from the musical “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” (which they didn’t use in the Tim Burton film). I repeat, why is there not a metal version of this? Musicians, get to it!

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.
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 impecably shaved.
By Sweeney,
by Sweeney Todd
the demon barber of fleet street.

Further Reading:

The String of Pearls, as a full e-text.
Mack, Robert. Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Oxford University Press, 2007.
Blood Butchers, a 1970s horror film.
Sweeney Todd in Knowledge of London – site makes out like the story is real but has some GREAT photographs.

If Sweeney Todd was alive today, he would …

Play bass for Dimmu Borgir
Throw awesome dinner parties
Be the first to suggest an after-gig pie run.

Tourist Information

Sweeney Todd’s barber shop is located on 186 Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstans church, and is connected to Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop in bell yard by an underground passage, acording to the original penny dreadful. Today, this address houses Dundee Couriers, and a Kwik copier shop underneath.