I searched "Sweeny Todd" on Wikipedia and got this... "It is sometimes claimed that the Sweeney Todd story is based upon fact, but no reliable evidence of this has ever been found. According to the tale, Todd was tried at the Old Bailey and hanged at Tyburn in January 1802, before a large crowd. However, no record of the trial can be found in the Old Bailey sessions papers or the Newgate Calendar, nor are there any contemporary press reports either of the trial or of the hanging. As early as 1878 a contributor to Notes and Queries noted this absence of authentic non-fictional sources.[7] Peter Haining, while arguing for historical reality, does not offer verifiable specifics.[2] An episode in the legend of Saint Nicholas may represent a yet earlier version. This episode, which likely developed in the eleventh century, sees three clerks seeking accommodations for the night. In the night, their host murders them and, on the advice of his wife, decides to dispose of the evidence by baking the clerks into meat pies. The saint eventually resurrects the young scholars. The cannibalistic trait of the story goes back as far as the myth of Pelops, while the moralistic symbolism of eating one's fellow man appears in social satire such as Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. The myth's imagery of meat pies made from people is almost certainly an allusion to the finale of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and the original Roman tale on which it was based. There is thought to have been a Jacobin barber who cut the throats of his customers during the French Revolution, though for politics rather than profit. Likewise, the 15th Century Scottish figure Sawney Bean led a family of thieves who are believed to have feasted on their victims. It may be relevant that 'Sweeney' could be considered a typically Irish name, just as 'Sawney' is a Scottish one; ethnic prejudice could underlie both legends."

This is a quote from the Crime Library page on Sweeny Todd. "There really was a mad barber, he really did use a trapdoor and straight razor to rob and kill customers, and most did end up as filling for meat pies. Extensive, painstaking research by British author Peter Haining has shown this without a doubt."

Never heard of anything in London.

Here is a link.. http://knowledgeoflondon.com/sweeny.html# Sweeney Todd the demon barber of Fleet Street, had his shop at number 186 Fleet Street, which is now the Dundee Courier building with a Kwick copier shop below as pictured here. On this site he is believed to have robbed and murdered over 150 customers, thereby making him the number one serial killer in British history. 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 at work in the jail, and with the little knowledge of haircuts he gained, 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. The first murder account in the Daily Courant, London’s first newspaper, that had by this time merged with the Daily Gazetteer, described a murder that could well have been the work of Todd. It recalls on 14th of April 1785 a murder was committed near to Fleet Street on a gentleman from the country who was on a visit to London. The gentleman was seen arguing with a barber when the barber took from his white coat a razor and slit the throat of the man, the barber then ran towards White Friars Street, disappearing into the fog. The story of the barbers shop tells of when customers were seated in the revolving chair, that stood in the centre of the small shop and over a trapdoor that led to a disused cellar. The chair if swung over would reveal an identical empty chair that would take its place. Sweeney when committing his murderous act, would exit through the rear door and down a flight of creaky stairs to where the customer would by now be lying unconscious after their fall. Sweeney would then take out his razor and slit their throats (through Sweeney Todd's act this type of razor became known as a cut throat razor). With his lover the pie maker Margery Lovett, they discovered a disused underground tunnel leading from the cellar of Sweeney’s shop, that ran beneath St Dunstan's Church and the burial crypt, finishing up under Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop, that would make an ideal business partnership for them both. The story for Sweeney Todd ended at the end of a rope on January 25th 1802. He was strung up outside Newgate Prison; it is said before a crowd of thousands, who had been waiting throughout the night to see Sweeney’s demise. After his execution, his body given over for medical research by a group of hospital surgeons. Sweeney Todd ended up, like so many of his victims, with his entrails on a plate. And as for Mrs. Margery Lovett, she was to cheat death by the hangman, she was found by prison warders poisoned in her cell at Newgate prison. If you had been looking for a hair cut and had been walking along Fleet Street in the year of 1785, heading westwards towards the Temple bar, a large gateway in the centre of the road, and heading for the fresh air of Covent Gardens, you would have crossed over Fetter Lane on your right and then immediately afterwards you would have noticed Hen and Chicken court, a dark narrow passageway. Perhaps you may have paused, and if a young woman asked you to go down the alleyway with her for some sport, you would have felt the danger of walking down such a dark alleyway alone. You would not have been aware of the horror lurking inside the old brown wooden barber shop at the side of the alley would be a great deal more of a danger than the girl beckoning in the alley, and if you decided not to have a haircut or shave you would have passed by Todd's barber shop with a lucky escape. The first murder account in the Daily Courant, London’s first newspaper, that had by this time merged with the Daily Gazetteer, described a murder that could well have been the work of Todd. It recalls on 14th of April 1785 a murder was committed near to Fleet Street on a gentleman from the country who was on a visit to London. The gentleman was seen arguing with a barber when the barber took from his white coat a razor and slit the throat of the man, the barber then ran towards White Friars Street, disappearing into the fog. The story of the barbers shop tells of when customers were seated in the revolving chair, that stood in the centre of the small shop and over a trapdoor that led to a disused cellar. The chair if swung over would reveal an identical empty chair that would take its place. Sweeney when committing his murderous act, would exit through the rear door and down a flight of creaky stairs to where the customer would by now be lying unconscious after their fall. Sweeney would then take out his razor and slit their throats (through Sweeney Todd's act this type of razor became known as a cut throat razor). With his lover the pie maker Margery Lovett, they discovered a disused underground tunnel leading from the cellar of Sweeney’s shop, that ran beneath St Dunstan's Church and the burial crypt, finishing up under Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop, that would make an ideal business partnership for them both. The story for Sweeney Todd ended at the end of a rope on January 25th 1802. He was strung up outside Newgate Prison; it is said before a crowd of thousands, who had been waiting throughout the night to see Sweeney’s demise. After his execution, his body given over for medical research by a group of hospital surgeons. Sweeney Todd ended up, like so many of his victims, with his entrails on a plate. And as for Mrs. Margery Lovett, she was to cheat death by the hangman, she was found by prison warders poisoned in her cell at Newgate prison. If you had been looking for a hair cut and had been walking along Fleet Street in the year of 1785, heading westwards towards the Temple bar, a large gateway in the centre of the road, and heading for the fresh air of Covent Gardens, you would have crossed over Fetter Lane on your right and then immediately afterwards you would have noticed Hen and Chicken court, a dark narrow passageway. Perhaps you may have paused, and if a young woman asked you to go down the alleyway with her for some sport, you would have felt the danger of walking down such a dark alleyway alone. You would not have been aware of the horror lurking inside the old brown wooden barber shop at the side of the alley would be a great deal more of a danger than the girl beckoning in the alley, and if you decided not to have a haircut or shave you would have passed by Todd's barber shop with a lucky escape. 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 flavor never surpassed and rarely equaled; 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.”

Sorry, but Wikipedia is not a good place to find facts.

No pure myth. No evidence of him ever existing apart from a 'story' in a penny dreadful magazine

The thing is that no record of the trial was ever kept because of the cannonball crime in the 1700's was not exceptable and if word got out people would not eat pies ever again. read the true story in www.knowledgeoflondon.co/sweeny.html and see the crime sceene as it looks today.

i dont really know, but the movie was SO FREAKIN AWESOME! (not that he chopped people and put them in pies, but the other stuff. lol)