Whats hot and Whats not

Revealed: The truth about the REAL Sweeney Todd

Last updated at 14:45pm on 19th January 2008 Comments (6)

A new film tells the gruesome story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who turned his clients into meat pies. Ghoulish fiction? Recently found evidence suggests otherwise … On a late March afternoon, the London drizzle and fog made it seem as if night had already fallen. A lone figure paused outside a church in Fleet Street, pulling a gold-braided hat over his eyes and wrapping his expensive cloak around him.

Something caught his attention - the flash of metal in the candlelight of a filthy shop. Its window was dirt-encrusted, but through the grime a notice could be made out: “Easy Shaving For A Penny”.

The stranger ran his hand over his stubbly chin. It was 1785 and he had arrived in London early to do business and was to stay overnight. Perhaps he should smarten himself up. The proceeds of the business deal were folded in his wallet; who knew what the evening would bring?

Scroll down for more …

The film version of the gruesome tale stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter

Minutes later, the man settled in the barber’s chair, but not for long. At the throw of an unseen lever, the seat tipped backwards and the floorboards in front of his feet rose up, the ceiling spinning. He was flipped out of the chair and into the cellar below. If his neck was not broken by the fall onto the basement’s stone floor, Sweeney Todd, the barber, would soon slit his throat with a razor.

Then the man was stripped of his money, and his flesh. Along with 160 others, his body was sliced up and used in pies.

It is a bloodthirsty tale which touches one of mankind’s most primal fears: that of being killed and eaten. But this forerunner of Hannibal Lecter, and a serial killer far surpassing the Yorkshire Ripper, also has a morbid attraction.

Sweeney Todd’s name is seen in Victorian ‘penny dreadful’ newspapers and then 19thcentury melodrama, complete with his own catchphrase, “See how I polish ‘em off!” In modern times, the Demon Barber’s tale has been adapted first as a Stephen Sondheim musical and now a Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Todd’s story, however, has always been dismissed as exactly that - a story. For years, his existence was denied. Academics pronounced him a fictional composite, his grisly character an amalgam of several serial killers.

From my early days as a journalist on Fleet Street, I, too, have been fascinated by Todd. But over 25 years’ research, I discovered new information that proves inescapably that Sweeney Todd existed.

Scroll down for more …

Depp said he scared himself with the role of the demon barber

I pored over archives in London and Washington, looked at 18th-century maps and scrutinised contemporary publications. They revealed that Todd’s life and crimes were more intriguing, more curious and more gruesome than previously suspected. Moreover, his background conforms to the psychological profiles of serial killers built up by modern police criminologists.

The Demon Barber’s crimes, it turns out, are no urban myth.

Sweeney Todd was born on October 26, 1756, in Brick Lane. The house in which the child first breathed the fetid air of the East London slums is not known, but it was probably near Spitalfields.

His troubled, violent early life mirrors that of more recent killers. Todd’s mother, not 20, scratched a living winding silk. Her husband, a struggling silk weaver, was a drunk who beat his son and his wife.

Todd said later: “My mother used to make quite a pet of me. I was fondled and kissed and called a pretty boy. 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?”

This undercurrent of malevolence was compounded by the young Todd’s bizarre interest in the instruments of torture displayed at the nearby Tower of London. To escape his parents’ brawling, he lingered in the Tower’s museum, where thumbscrews, racks and other macabre tools were displayed to discourage citizens from dissent.

Todd hated his home life and his ginsodden parents. He is unlikely to have shed a tear when, in the freezing winter of 1768, they disappeared, possibly dying on the streets while seeking booze. Equally mysterious is how the boy survived that winter, turning up the next year as an apprentice cutler. His master, John Crook of Holborn, specialised in razors.

The boy’s life abruptly changed again in 1770, when Todd was jailed for five years for petty theft. His crime is not recorded, but he entered Newgate prison aged 14 feeling ever more bitter.

In prison, fate overtook the semiliterate boy. The prison’s barber, a grizzled old man called Plummer, employed him as an assistant, where he soaped condemned men’s chins for shaving before they walked to the gallows.

Despite his association with Plummer, Todd did not escape the vindictiveness of fellow prisoners. On one occasion he was left for dead after a beating - for pilfering from a murderer.

The Sweeney Todd who walked out of Newgate in autumn 1775 was a strapping 19-year-old with a grudge. The years had made him morose and resentful and he would soon repay London for the violence it had visited upon him, many times over.

With his new skills, Todd made a good living as a street corner barber. Within five years of leaving prison, he had earned enough to open a shop near Hyde Park Corner. There the barber was helped by a young woman, whom he referred to as his wife despite his never marrying, and who bore the brunt of Todd’s growing rages.

Already, the signs were there in the barber’s behaviour. Criminal psychologists now believe violence in the home

is an early indicator of a propensity towards murder. They rehearse brutality behind closed doors before embarking on murderous careers. By now, violence was the norm for Todd, as victim and perpetrator.

The event that pushed him over the edge occurred in December 1784. A yearly news chronicle of the time tells the story.

“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. The barber, concluding this to be his wife, and in the height of his frenzy, cut the young gentleman’s throat from ear to ear and absconded.”

Scroll down for more …

The film is already tipped to win awards

Was the murderer Todd? We cannot be certain. But he said after his arrest many years later: “My first ‘un was a young gent at Hyde Park Corner. Slit him from ear to ear, I did.”

There is, however, no disputing where he next came to light - Fleet Street. There, he would combine the ingenuity of a cutler with the skill of a barber to embark on an era of bloodshed unique in British criminal history.

London at the time was a perfect setting for Todd’s misdeeds. Policing was in its infancy and human life was cheap, with the stench of poverty, illness and debauchery enveloping the crowded city. Fleet Street itself was little more than a huddle of taverns, mean dwellings, exhibitions and freak shows.

The exact location of Todd’s shop is disputed. I believe it was at number 186 Fleet Street, beside St Dunstan’s Church. Its position is in direct line to Bell Yard on the other side of the church where the pie shop was placed, the two points linked by many passageways.

As I was completing a new edition of my book on Todd, the London filmmaker Tom Whitter added an intriguing piece to the jigsaw. He had located old plans of the tunnels, which satisfied him that this labyrinth made communication between Fleet Street and Bell Yard feasible.

He invited me to visit the underground chambers and it was not difficult to see how they might have served Todd’s purposes.

Todd paid £125 for the lease on the dilapidated shop and advertised his dual role of barber and surgeon with a white pole striped in red. The words “Sweeney Todd, Barber” were painted in fat yellow letters over the door.

The 18th-century barber was both hairdresser and doctor. People went to him for minor bodily complaints and some barbers were even surgeons and performed small operations.

The white on the pole represents a bandage with which the patient was bound after an operation. Sweeney Todd’s window displayed jars filled with coagulated blood and rotten teeth. These were to advertise his skill at pulling teeth and bleeding clients.

The barber himself was, if anything, even less attractive than his run-down shop. Accounts describe him as sullen, with heavy eyebrows, a hard mouth and pugnacious features.

The Gentleman’s Magazine said in 1853: “There was also something very sinister about him with his pale face and reddish hair. At times he was like some hobgoblin, his strange, dark eyes agleam with greed and cunning.”

The second killing ascribed to Sweeney Todd was committed in Fleet Street. An article in the Daily Courant of April 14, 1785, reported the murder of a young gentleman who had fallen into conversation with a man dressed as a barber.

Popularity: 20% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: OfferForge | kalahari.net | bidorbuy )