Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of London

The demon barber of Fleet Street

According to legend which first appeared in 1846 in a story titled The String of Pearls, Sweeney Todd was a barber believed to have murdered more than 150 of his customers at his barber shop situated at number 186 Fleet Street. Once they were sat in his barber’s chair, he cut his victims throats from ear to ear and dispatched them by pulling a lever which made them fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop where he stealed all their valuables.

Helped by his lover Mrs Lovett, who ran a pie shop in nearby Bell Yard which was connected to Todd’s barber shop by a secret underground passage, she assisted him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop.

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