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SWEENEY TODD THE MYTH AND THE LEGEND

Sweeney Todd is the cannibalistic forerunner for many a killer, Hannibal Lector being the latest incarnation, they all draw on one of mankind's most persistent subconscious fears 'that of being killed and eaten' it is something that is buried in the recesses of our minds particularly that of children, it is not hard to see why he has had such an lasting morbid fascination, and its is unsurprising that he can be traced back so far.

How far the verbal stories and London gossip concerning Sweeney Todd date back is impossible to tell or indeed if the legend is untrue where it came from. Dating all the way back to the fifteenth century is a French ballad that used to be sung to children, the song tells about a demon barber who cuts his clients throats dumps them into his cellar before turning them into pies, like Sweeney Todd he works with an accomplice a 'ferocious female,' similarly to Sweeney Todd he is tied to a specific locality, in this case '24 Rue des Marmouzets,' one of the lines of the song is "and he says of his customers when defunct, they are gone pork creatures." If this is the true origin of the myth of Sweeney Todd and due to the striking similarity it is quite probable, how and when the demon barber was transformed to London is unknown, but even before the character we now know as Sweeney Todd was formed there was plenty of gossip and rumours about him as he slowly became part of folklore, Charles Dickens alluded to him but drew short of mentioning his name in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit first published in 1844 'Upon my word thought Tom, quickening his pace "I don't know what John will think has become of me. He'll begin to be afraid I have strayed into one of those streets where the countrymen are murdered; and that I have been made meat pies of, or some such horrible thing."'

Published in 1847 'The String of Pearls' assured Sweeney Todd his fame and immortality, it was the start of the legend that we know and recognise as Sweeney Todd, published in a series in a semi legal magazine nearly a hundred years since Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett were said to be at large on the streets of London. The actual author or authors of these highly influential penny dreadfuls, as they were called at the time, is not known adding to the sagas mystery, what we do know is that the publisher was a man called Edward Lloyd (1814-90), he started in publishing with a pirate version of 'Pitman's Shorthand,' he renamed it 'Lloyd's Stenographer' and sold it for a fraction of the price of the genuine version. With the profits he then went on to publish sensational accounts of highwaymen, pirates and murderers often stolen and plagiarised from other authors. Along the way he picked up Thomas Peckett Prest (1810-49) and James Malcolm Rymer (1815-89) whom he employed as hacks, both could write several series simultaneously and at amazing speed, and both are likely to have done some of the writing on 'The String of Pearls.' The stories they produced were sold in penny serials to an audience hungry for stories full of blood, gore and horror, hence their name penny dreadfuls. It was one of these serials called 'The People's Periodical and Family Library' that the 'The String of Pearls' ran.
From its text and style of writing the 'The String of Pearls' suggest it has more than one author perhaps even three, sub plots and characters appear and disappear for no obvious reason, chapter titles which serve as a plan for the book often don't match the chapter themselves.
Later Lloyd started more legitimate journals and seeking respectability collected as many of his former publications as possible, unfortunately he was quite successful and now any of Lloyds publications are extremely rare which has further added to Sweeney Todd's mystery.

After the publication of 'The String of Pearls' Sweeney Todd has become one of the best known names in Crime stories, he's appeared in plays, books and serialisations along side Jack the Ripper and Dracula he is the villain everybody loves to hate, through countless novels, films, melodramas, cameo's and even musicals all of which have drawn heavily on the 'The String of Pearls' and all boosting and further fuelling the myth that is Sweeney Todd the demon barber of Fleet Street, so much so hat his name has become immortal.
'The String of Pearls' influenced everything that has been written about Sweeney Todd since, it also had a great influence on many of the fictional villains that came thereafter, Mr Hyde and Dracula are made in his mould yet somehow not equal to him, the misguided good of Dr Jekyll balances the evil of Mr Hyde, Dracula manages against the odds to evoke pity from Mina Harker, Todd in contrast goes about his deeds with a ghoulish humour, a boldness and panache, he does simply for the love of money and because he wants to, the writer asks no excuse for his behaviour and seeks no justification.
At one point Sweeney Todd became so popular that by the 1940s the word barber was actually beginning to be considered vulgar, teacher even urging their pupils to only use the word hairdresser, in a study of juvenile literature E.S. Turner wrote in 1948 that the astonishing popularity of Sweeney Todd has caused a good old English word to lapse into disrepute and should now be replaced by the word hairdresser.
With depressingly predictability Sweeney Todd has produced copy cat crimes and imitated murders, the most prolific was between 1918 and 1924 a German called Fritz Hartman killed and murdered some fifty men and boys he then sold their meet for human consumption.