What are some quick facts about Sweeney Todd?

Answer 1

Sweeney was born on 16th October 1756, at number 85 Brick Lane in London's East End. In those times Brick Lane was almost a rural country lane that led out to the brickfields of Bethnal Green. Todd's mother Elizabeth, was a silk-winder and his father Samuel Todd a silk weaver, working for the French Huguenots in nearby Norton Folgate, Spitalfields. In February 1770 aged only 14 years Sweeney Todd was sentenced to a five year term in Newgate Prison wrongly accused of stealing a pocket watch. While in prison he met up with an old barber named Elmer Plummer, who was serving ten years for fraud. Plummer took a liking to young Sweeney and taught him how to cut hair and shave, and how to pick pockets of the customers, Sweeney was a keen learner and soon became Plummer's apprentice boy, lathering-up and shaving some of the prisoners who could afford their services.

After his release in 1775, with a few pounds he had stolen while at work in Newgate, and with the little knowledge he gained of haircuts, Sweeney Todd opened his Barber Shop at 186 Fleet Street, next door to St Dunstan's Church, just a few blocks away from the Royal Courts of Justice. The shop stood at the side of the narrow alleyway named Hen and Chicken Court, at the corner of Fetter Lane.

Sweeney was born on 16th October 1756, at number 85 Brick Lane in London's East End. In those times Brick Lane was almost a rural country lane that led out to the brickfields of Bethnal Green. Todd's mother Elizabeth, was a silk-winder and his father Samuel Todd a silk weaver, working for the French Huguenots in nearby Norton Folgate, Spitalfields. In February 1770 aged only 14 years Sweeney Todd was sentenced to a five year term in Newgate Prison wrongly accused of stealing a pocket watch. While in prison he met up with an old barber named Elmer Plummer, who was serving ten years for fraud. Plummer took a liking to young Sweeney and taught him how to cut hair and shave, and how to pick pockets of the customers, Sweeney was a keen learner and soon became Plummer's apprentice boy, lathering-up and shaving some of the prisoners who could afford their services.

After his release in 1775, with a few pounds he had stolen while at work in Newgate, and with the little knowledge he gained of haircuts, Sweeney Todd opened his Barber Shop at 186 Fleet Street, next door to St Dunstan's Church, just a few blocks away from the Royal Courts of Justice. The shop stood at the side of the narrow alleyway named Hen and Chicken Court, at the corner of Fetter Lane. Thomas Peckett Prest was the first author to write the tale of Sweeney Todd and Margery Lovett shortly after their arrest and trial. He had worked on Fleet Street and was familiar with Lovett's two-story pie shop. In the basement of the shop was the bakery, and a false wall could be opened to reveal the catacombs behind. It was through this false wall that Todd would apparently deliver his ghastly pie fillings. Prest described the shop this way: "On the left side of Bell Yard, going down from Carey Street, was, at the time we write of, one of the most celebrated shops for the sale of veal and pork pies that London had ever produced. High and low, rich and poor, resorted to it; its fame had spread far and wide; and at twelve o'clock every day when the first batch of pies was sold there was a tremendous rush to obtain them. "Oh, those delicious pies," wrote Prest (who probably sampled one or two in his time). "There was about them a flavour never surpassed and rarely equalled; the paste was of the most delicate construction, and impregnated with the aroma of delicious gravy that defied description." No one believes that Mrs. Lovett was solely responsible for baking her renowned meat pies. A 1924 account states that she had a hired girl and a male pie maker who helped with the preparation. It was unlikely that either of them suspected where Mrs. Lovett's meat supply came from, and C.W. Biller, in that 1924 biography, asserts that anyone who began to suspect "they, too, became pie filling."