Indeed, the proceedings of the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1913 are now available to peruse online via a fully searchable database. There is no transcript for a trial of a Sweeney Todd, nor for that matter any similar crimes. A case so notorious would doubtless have attracted the attention of pamphleteers and journalists and would, no doubt, receive millions of hits on the Old Bailey website. Yet history is silent on actual cold facts about the case and the Old Bailey transcripts don't show up anywhere at all on Google for the search term Sweeney Todd Trial at the Old Bailey.
Yet the story of Sweeny Todd has never lost its popularity and this hideous creation and his foul deeds continue to shock and thrill in equal measure in television dramas and most recently in the film Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp. So what was the inspiration for this bloodthirsty tome and was there a real life counterpart upon whom the creators and developers of one of the most famous and long lasting Victorian melodramas based the character?
Although the Sweeney Todd story as we know it today first appeared between November 1846 and March 1847 in Edward Lloyd's (1815-1890) The People's Periodical and Family Library as an eighteen part serial entitled The String of Pearls: A Romance, the story drew upon and was heavily influenced by several previous well known fictions.
In the 1830's Lloyd had made something of a name for himself by plagiarizing the works of Charles Dickens. Oliver Twiss and Nikelas Nickelberry were just two of Lloyds attempts to capitalise on the success and storylines of the 19th century's greatest author. Inevitably Dickens also part influenced Lloyd's most enduring storyline, that of Sweeny Todd.
It seems much more likely that the story of Sweeney originated in urban myth. Dickens himself in ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ (1843/44) mentions facetiously ‘preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis’. Even today, most of us have heard scare stories of various bits of anatomy appearing in fast food. Imagine, then, how it must have been in mid-Victorian London, when food was frequently coloured and doctored to make it more saleable and few legal restrictions were in place. Indeed, in the 1840s and 1850s, many Londoners feared – with good reason – that their sausages and pies were being filled with cheap horsemeat (normally hawked round the streets as cat food); it didn’t require much imagination to take that scam one stage further.
In fairness, Lloyd’s artful co-opting of history has probably served Sweeney Todd quite well, leaving it usefully open to different interpretations. A 1926 silent movie (now lost) reportedly played it for laughs. The 1936 film (‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’) features the great Tod Slaughter, wringing his hands and cackling ‘I’ll polish him off’, although bizarrely, the victims’ final destination is never explicitly mentioned: perhaps the filmmakers feared that Mrs Lovett’s pies would give the censors indigestion. A musical version first appeared in London in 1959, a ballet in 1960. And the London Dungeon wasn’t the first to provide a ‘Sweeney Todd Experience’; in the 1920s a wine merchant in Johnson’s Court, off Fleet Street, purported to be the site of Todd’s shop. Not content with infamy by association, the shop proudly displayed the ‘original’ barber’s chair, complete with mechanism for dropping customers into the basement.
Sondheim’s musical is, in fact, based on Christopher Bond’s 1973 play, which introduced a psychological background to Todd’s crimes (he was the victim of a ruthless judge who transported Sweeney to Australia to take advantage of Sweeney’s young wife, Lucy). But, whatever the details, it seems likely that Sweeney Todd and his gruesome dinners will be with us for many years to come.
