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?
