Over time, the story has grown to become more palatable to modern audiences. However, there's speculation a murderous baker/hairdresser duo in France may have been the inspiration. No public record of Sweeney Todd or a man of his description ever existing or taking up residence on Fleet Street has ever been found - no birth certificate, no death certificate - and because so many Victorian newspapers were prone to reporting troubling hearsay as if it was true, we will never know if it truly happened. Your life was literally in these people's hands. Barbers at the time were commonly surgeons on the side so you can see how this played into existing Victorian fears. Mrs Lovett in turn bakes them into pies and sells them in her popular Fleet Street pie shop. If the job isn't done, Sweeney personally polishes them off with his trademark cut-throat razor. He kills them by pulling a lever while they are in the barber’s chair, causing them to fall through a trapdoor and break their necks as they hit the basement below. The story tells the tale of a cold-blooded barber - or as he is described in the book 'a long, low-jointed, ill put-together sort of fellow.' - who murders his customers and hands over their bodies to his partner-in-crime, Mrs Lovett. One of the most famous stories to emerge from this period was of course, Sweeney Todd. The character first appeared in an 18-part Penny Dreadful called 'The String Of Pearls: A Romance' - a dark tale attributed to Thomas Peckett-Prest and more recently James Malcolm Rymer. As well as pillaging from true crime, many famous writers such as Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins had their work ripped off here as the Penny Dreadfuls became an acceptable way for the poorer classes to access expensive fiction. The writers of these stories fed the Victorian love of melodrama, elevating existing fears with tales of murderous highwaymen, doomed lovers and ominous spectres. This powerful combination led to an unprecedented audience who lapped up the sensational subject matter on a huge scale. These popular stories appeared in the 19th century when literacy rates among the working classes were climbing and crime in London was exploding. Originally termed ‘penny bloods’, the Penny Dreadfuls were pieces of cheap newspaper fiction serialised in the 1800s.

Penny dreadful book