Was Sweeney Todd a real murderer—or a fictional villain who became so deeply embedded in popular culture that people began to believe he had actually existed?

In this feature-length documentary, London historian and tour guide Richard Jones traces the extraordinary evolution of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street: from his first appearance in the Victorian penny serial The String of Pearls, through the theatres and melodramas of the nineteenth century, and into silent cinema, Tod Slaughter’s celebrated 1936 film, Christopher Bond’s transformative stage play and Stephen Sondheim’s musical masterpiece.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:55 A History of Fleet Street
05:18 St Dunstan’s Church and Clock
06:56 Introduction to Sweeney Todd
07:50 The Problem With Barbers
09:47 We Meet Sweeney Todd In The Flesh
11:54 The Man Watching The Clock
12:10 Sweeney Todd’s First Victim (In The Story)
13:21 Mrs Lovett’s Pie Shop, Bell Yard
15:38 Edward Lloyd And The Creation of Sweeney Todd
16:57 Edward Lloyd Versus Charles Dickens
20:04 Varney The Vampire
20:42 Joddrel The Barber - Sweeney Todd Precursor
21:20 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper
21:47 The First Appearance of Sweeney Todd In The String of Pearls
22:03 Who Created Sweeney Todd?
22:39 Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit and Its Influence
24:57 The Original Sweeney Todd Story
36:21 Sweeney Todd Moves To The Theatre
36:49 George Dibdin Pitt’s Play “The String of Pearls or The Fiend of Fleet Street”
39:08 Sweeney Todd In Penny Dreadfuls
39:34 Remains Of His Victims Found In Fleet Street In 1913?
40:34 Sweeney Todd Falls Out of Fashion
40:55 Tod Slaughter Revives Todd
43:36 Tod Slaughter Makes The Character His Own
44:31 Slaughter Becomes “Mr Murder”
45:13 Sweeney Todd Appears In Films
46:48 Tod Slaughter's Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
50:10 The Death of Tod Slaughter
50:40 Sweeney Todd In The 1950s and 1960s
52:11 Christopher Bond Transforms Todd
56:55 Stephen Sondheim Buys The Rights to Bond’s Play
57:23 Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Opens
01:03:14 Was Sweeney Todd A Real Person?
01:06:43 The Life of Sweeney Todd
01:08:23 Inspirations For Sweeney Todd
01:11:42 Fleet Street Today
01:13:14 Conclusion

Drawing upon original publications, contemporary newspaper reports, theatrical advertisements and rare historical illustrations, the film explores the world in which Sweeney Todd was created and follows the gradual transformation of a murderous barber into an enduring figure of popular culture.

It also enters the extraordinary publishing world of Edward Lloyd and examines his battles with Charles Dickens and Dickens’s publishers. Lloyd made a fortune from inexpensive imitations of fashionable novels, issuing such audacious publications as The Penny Pickwick, Oliver Twiss and Nickelas Nickelbery. The resulting disputes reveal a period in which popular characters and successful stories could be copied, adapted and sold to an expanding readership with remarkably little effective legal restraint.

There is also compelling evidence suggesting that the writer—or writers—of the original Sweeney Todd serial borrowed elements from Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit. Richard examines the striking similarities and presents the case for literary appropriation within the cut-throat world of nineteenth-century publishing.

The film also reveals fascinating details largely overlooked in modern accounts—including the charity auction of the first known Sweeney Todd film in 1926 and the alarming accident suffered by actor Charles Ashton while filming the Demon Barber’s chair sequence in 1928.

Along the way, we shall encounter the disputed authorship of The String of Pearls, Mrs Lovett’s celebrated meat pies, the theatrical sensation of Todd’s revolving chair and the performers and dramatists who repeatedly reshaped the story.

Finally, we return to Fleet Street itself to search for the surviving places associated with the legend—and to confront the most persistent question of all: Did Sweeney Todd ever really exist?

If you enjoy carefully researched films about London’s darker history, this is a video you will enjoy immensley.
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