Jan 3, 2006
SWEENEY TODD: FACT OR FICTION?
'He kept a shop in London Town /Of fancy clients and good renown/And what if none of their souls were saved?/They went to their maker impeccably shaved.'
So goes 'The Ballad of Sweeney Todd' in Stephen Sondheim's popular musical.
For two centuries, newspaper-readers, theatre-goers and young children have been repelled and entranced by the exploits of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street; a mass murderer who slit the throats of his clientele as they relaxed in the barber's chair. Their corpses were then served up by his lover in apparently highly regarded meat pies.
The exact number of smooth-chinned gentlemen despatched by Mr Todd " and, indeed, whether or not he existed at all " is disputed among crime historians. Tonight, BBC1 airs Sweeney Todd. Set in the backstreets of late 18th-century London, it treats the murders with a grim realism. The actor Ray Winstone plays the leading part, while Essie Davis is Mrs Lovett, a girlfriend who 'isn't too choosy about her men or the source of meat for her pie shop'.
A high gore content and body count are assured. More questionable is Winstone's claim that Todd is 'a character you may find yourself feeling sorry for'.
But is it really possible that such a picaresque psychopath ever existed?
Crime historian Peter Haining, who ploughed through the available evidence for 25 years before writing Sweeney Todd: The Real Story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 1993, believes so. He was absolutely convinced of Todd's existence by reports he found in The Newgate Calendar " 'a more factual, reliable document than the penny dreadfuls of the time'. He added: 'It is simply all too gruesome not to be true.'
By Mr Haining's account " still not widely accepted " the man was the monstrous product of his hard upbringing, an opportunist thief who was barbarous even by the standards of his contemporaries, 'polishing off' at least 160 victims in a 17-year killing frenzy.
The story begins with Todd's birth, to gin-soaked parents, in a Stepney slum on 26 October 1756. He endured a short, poverty-stricken childhood (during which his main fascination was with the instruments of torture at the Tower of London) before being orphaned aged 12. He survived by becoming apprentice to a vicious cutler (specialist in razors), John Crook. Two years later, he was jailed for petty theft and sentenced to five years in the notoriously harsh Newgate Prison. There he learnt his trade as 'soap boy' to the prison barber. By the time he walked out of the gates in the autumn of 1775 he was 'a morose, bitter and cruel young man of 19', according to Haining. He then found work as a 'flying barber' of no fixed abode, before settling in the infamous premises next to St Dunstan's Church on Fleet Street, then a haven for drunkards and robbers. 'Easy shaving for a penny " as good as you will find any,' ran the shopfront sign, next to which were displayed jars with teeth he had pulled and blood he had let " references to the surgical duties of a barber....
So goes 'The Ballad of Sweeney Todd' in Stephen Sondheim's popular musical.
For two centuries, newspaper-readers, theatre-goers and young children have been repelled and entranced by the exploits of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street; a mass murderer who slit the throats of his clientele as they relaxed in the barber's chair. Their corpses were then served up by his lover in apparently highly regarded meat pies.
The exact number of smooth-chinned gentlemen despatched by Mr Todd " and, indeed, whether or not he existed at all " is disputed among crime historians. Tonight, BBC1 airs Sweeney Todd. Set in the backstreets of late 18th-century London, it treats the murders with a grim realism. The actor Ray Winstone plays the leading part, while Essie Davis is Mrs Lovett, a girlfriend who 'isn't too choosy about her men or the source of meat for her pie shop'.
A high gore content and body count are assured. More questionable is Winstone's claim that Todd is 'a character you may find yourself feeling sorry for'.
But is it really possible that such a picaresque psychopath ever existed?
Crime historian Peter Haining, who ploughed through the available evidence for 25 years before writing Sweeney Todd: The Real Story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 1993, believes so. He was absolutely convinced of Todd's existence by reports he found in The Newgate Calendar " 'a more factual, reliable document than the penny dreadfuls of the time'. He added: 'It is simply all too gruesome not to be true.'
By Mr Haining's account " still not widely accepted " the man was the monstrous product of his hard upbringing, an opportunist thief who was barbarous even by the standards of his contemporaries, 'polishing off' at least 160 victims in a 17-year killing frenzy.
The story begins with Todd's birth, to gin-soaked parents, in a Stepney slum on 26 October 1756. He endured a short, poverty-stricken childhood (during which his main fascination was with the instruments of torture at the Tower of London) before being orphaned aged 12. He survived by becoming apprentice to a vicious cutler (specialist in razors), John Crook. Two years later, he was jailed for petty theft and sentenced to five years in the notoriously harsh Newgate Prison. There he learnt his trade as 'soap boy' to the prison barber. By the time he walked out of the gates in the autumn of 1775 he was 'a morose, bitter and cruel young man of 19', according to Haining. He then found work as a 'flying barber' of no fixed abode, before settling in the infamous premises next to St Dunstan's Church on Fleet Street, then a haven for drunkards and robbers. 'Easy shaving for a penny " as good as you will find any,' ran the shopfront sign, next to which were displayed jars with teeth he had pulled and blood he had let " references to the surgical duties of a barber....