The real Sweeney Todd of fleet st.So I looked it up.
Last night I did a bunch of reading about the real Sweeney Todd to see if he was a real "demon barber" on 186 Fleet Street. Turns out there WAS. On knowledgeoflondon.com (is you go under crime and look for Sweeney Todd on the left hand side) there's a picture of his actual barber shop and canals that were/are under Fleet Street where he left the bodies. Well the photo of the canal is on crimelibrary.com. It was really interesting and how sad his story was.
What makes it so sad was, he was orphaned and the age of 12, at age 14 he was sent to jail for penny pocketing for five years. When he got out he opened the shop on 186 Fleet Street, killed his customers around his late twenties (after his first murder near Hyde Park Corner. The paper had a headline of "A Cut-Throat Barber"), and sent the victems down a shute into the canals and let them pile up. That is until he met Mrs. Margery Lovett. That's when they started making the meat pies. Well, if you know the story, you'd know they are Sweeney's customers!
17yrs. after Todd started killing, Thomas Peckett Prest smelled rotting flesh in St. Dunstan's Chruch that is located next to Todd and Lovett's shop. He reported it and after investigations and such they found 160 corpses in the canals under Fleet Street. They arrested Lovett and sent her to jail. She escaped the gallows by poisoned herself and died.
After 10 minutes of Todd's trial he was convicted guilty of course and hung until death on January 25, 1802.
Now it's 206 years later and his tale is a Tony award winning play and multiple movies with the latest up for a Golden Globe for Best Film of the Year. (Hope it WINS all four nominations!)
I know a wide variety of high professors in colleges and such believe Sweeney wasn't a real person, but the story is too gruesome NOT to be true.
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