The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Sweeney Todd and His Reign of Terror

The chair reclined with a mechanical groan. The blade flashed once, twice across the throat, severing the windpipe so the screams came out as wet gurgles. Then, with a lever’s pull, the floor beneath gave way and the body tumbled down into the fetid darkness below, blood still pumping from the gaping neck wound, spattering the cellar walls in arterial spray.

Down there, Mrs Lovett waited with her cleaver and her bone saw, ready to begin the butchering. This was Fleet Street, London, in the 1780s, where the most prolific serial killer in British history turned human flesh into profit, one throat at a time.

The People Who Never Left

Between 1785 and 1801, over 160 people vanished without a trace from the winding streets around Fleet Street. They entered Sweeney Todd’s barber shop on the corner of Fleet Street and Hen and Chicken Court seeking a shave or a haircut. They never left.

Their bodies, however, found their way into the meat pies sold next door at Mrs Margery Lovett’s pie shop, which had inexplicably become the most popular establishment of its kind in all of London. The pies were succulent, rich, and remarkably affordable.

Customers queued round the block for them, salivating at the smell of the roasting meat, never knowing they were eating their neighbours, their business associates, sometimes even their own missing relatives. When the truth emerged, several customers went mad on the spot.

The Killing Chair of Fleet Street

Todd’s barber shop was an abattoir disguised as respectability. The premises sat above a labyrinth of tunnels connecting to the vaults of St Dunstan’s Church, where the dampness preserved the hanging carcasses for days. His method was brutally efficient. The barber chair itself was the instrument of death, a mechanical marvel of murder that he had designed himself with the help of a blacksmith who subsequently became one of its first victims.

Once a customer sat down, particularly wealthy-looking gentlemen travelling alone, Todd would position them just so, lather their faces with soap mixed with laudanum to keep them docile, and engage them in pleasant conversation about the weather or the state of the roads. Then, mid-sentence, he would pull a lever concealed in the floorboards.

The chair would tilt backwards violently through a trapdoor, sending the victim sliding down a wooden chute into the cellar below.

He Would Finish Them Off With A Razor

Most broke their necks on impact with the stone floor. Those who survived the fall found themselves in complete darkness, bones already shattered, listening to Todd’s footsteps descending the stairs. He would finish them with the same razor he had been holding moments before, slitting throats with the practised efficiency of a butcher bleeding a hog. The blood drained into channels cut into the floor, flowing into buckets that Mrs Lovett used to make her gravies richer and darker.

The bodies piled up in that cellar between collections. In summer, the smell was overpowering. Todd burned incense constantly in the shop above to mask the stench of decomposition. He would strip the corpses of valuables, watches, coin purses, rings pried from stiffening fingers, and gold teeth extracted with pliers.

Then came the truly horrific part. The dismemberment. He became an expert in human anatomy, knowing exactly where to cut through joints, how to separate muscle from bone with minimal effort. The parcels of human meat, neatly wrapped in brown paper and labelled as pork or beef, were delivered through the tunnels to Mrs Lovett’s kitchen on a specially built trolley. Nothing was wasted. Even the bones were ground into meal.

Mrs Lovett’s Kitchen of Horrors

Mrs Lovett was no innocent party. She was Todd’s co-conspirator and, by all accounts, his lover. Her pies became legendary throughout London, so popular that other pie shops went out of business. The secret, she told curious competitors, was in the quality of the meat and her special seasoning pie blend. Loved by all.

What she did not mention was that human flesh tasted just like pork.

The fat rendered beautifully, creating a golden, flaky crust. The meat was always tender, falling apart at the touch of a fork. She seasoned it heavily with sage, thyme, and pepper to mask any unusual sweetness, though most customers detected nothing amiss whatsoever.

Human Teeth Baked Into Pies, Perhaps A Hair Or Two

Some did notice peculiarities. One regular customer found a human tooth baked into his pie and brought it to Mrs Lovett, who laughed it off as a bit of gristle and gave him a free pie for his trouble. Another discovered a finger bone and was told it was from a tiny chicken. The customers believed her because they wanted to believe her.

The alternative was too monstrous to contemplate. They simply kept coming back for more, wiping the juices from their chins, licking their fingers, asking for extra gravy.

The most disturbing detail emerged during the trial. A woman testified that her husband had disappeared near Fleet Street in 1796. Weeks later, she had eaten at Mrs Lovett’s establishment and remarked to her companion that the pie tasted oddly familiar, comforting in a way she could not explain. When the arrests were made five years later, she realised with dawning horror what she had consumed. She never spoke again, spending her remaining years in Bedlam, rocking back and forth and whispering, “I ate him. I ate him.”

The Unravelling of Evil

The horror finally came to light in 1801 when a dog belonging to a customer refused to stop barking outside Todd’s shop. The dog’s owner, a Mr Thornhill, had entered for a shave hours earlier and never emerged. When the dog began digging at the foundations of the building, scratching frantically at the stonework and howling in a way that made the locals’ blood run cold, neighbours grew suspicious. The magistrate was called. They broke down the door to find Todd attempting to burn clothing and personal effects in the fireplace, the stench of burning hair filling the shop.

In the cellar, they discovered a charnel house beyond imagination. Bones were stacked against the walls like firewood. Rotting flesh hung from hooks in various stages of butchering. Organs floated in barrels of brine. The floor was stained black with old blood, and flies covered every surface in a living carpet. The smell was so overpowering that several constables vomited repeatedly, unable to control their bodies’ revulsion. One young officer fainted and had to be carried out. In the tunnels, they found the connection to Mrs Lovett’s shop, the walls slick with rendered fat, and raided her premises simultaneously.

They Found Parcels Of Meat – Human Meat

In her kitchen, they found meat pies in various stages of preparation. When they cut one open, still warm from the oven, they found flesh that was identified by a surgeon as definitely human. In her cold store, they discovered parcels of meat including recognisable hands, feet, and a partially flayed torso that still bore a distinctive birthmark.

The investigating magistrate later wrote in his diary that the scene haunted him until his death, that he could never eat meat again without retching.

Todd and Lovett were arrested and charged with multiple counts of murder. The trial was a sensation that the nation never forgot. Todd showed no remorse whatsoever, staring blankly at the proceedings as if bored by the fuss. When asked if he felt any guilt, he replied, “Why should I? They were of no use to anyone. At least in death, they fed the hungry.”

Mrs Lovett’s Horrific Death

Mrs Lovett wept constantly but never denied her involvement, instead insisting that she had only done what any good businesswoman would do with a steady supply of free meat.

Before they could be hanged at Newgate Prison, Mrs Lovett poisoned herself in her cell using arsenic smuggled in by a corrupt guard. She died in agony, her body convulsing for hours. Todd went to the gallows in January 1802, cursing the crowd that had gathered to watch him swing. His last words were allegedly, “I have eaten many a man’s meat in my time, and I’ll wager you have too if you’ve ever darkened Mrs Lovett’s door.” He laughed as they placed the noose around his neck.

Todd’s Most Fitting End

The trapdoor opened, but Todd’s neck did not break cleanly. He strangled slowly, twitching and jerking for nearly fifteen minutes before finally going still, his face purple and tongue protruding obscenely.

The shop was torn down immediately, the cellar filled with lime and sealed. The tunnels were bricked up, though workmen reported hearing screams echoing through them even after they were empty. Mrs Lovett’s pie shop was burned to the ground by an angry mob. But the horror of Sweeney Todd’s crimes has never been forgotten. Fleet Street remembers its demon barber, and on foggy London nights, some say you can still hear the creak of that mechanical chair, the wet sound of a razor on flesh, and smell the sweet, sickening aroma of Mrs Lovett’s pies drifting through the ancient streets. And if you find yourself walking past the old location late at night, you might notice something else: the faint but unmistakable scent of burning human hair.