Sweeney Todd is a character who first appeared as the main protagonist of a penny dreadful serial titled The String of Pearls (1846-1847). Claims that Sweeney Todd was a historical person are strongly disputed by scholars, although there are possible legendary prototypes, arguably making the story of Sweeney Todd an early example of an urban legend. In the original version of the tale he is a barber who murders wealthy customers by slitting their throats then pulling a lever while they are in his barber's chair which, unknown to them, is fixed to a revolving trap-door, making them fall backward into the basement.

But in many adaptations of the tale, the murdering process is reversed, meaning that he pulls a lever causing them to drop into the basement and then slits their throats. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend who wants to become his lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by having their flesh baked into meat pies, and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop.

Todd's barber shop is situated at 186 Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan's church, and is connected to Mrs. Lovett's pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage.

The tale surrounding the character became a staple of Victorian melodrama, and later a Tony award-winning Broadway musical in 1979. Sweeney Todd has also been featured in several films, the most recent being 2007's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, directed by Tim Burton, with Johnny Depp in the title role. The original version of the tale, The String of Pearls, is set in London in the year 1785 and concerns the strange disappearance of a sailor named Lieutenant Thornhill, last seen entering Sweeney Todd's establishment on Fleet Street.

Thornhill was bearing a gift of a string of pearls (of the title) to a girl named Johanna Oakley on behalf of her missing lover, Mark Ingestrie, who is presumed lost at sea. One of Thornhill's seafaring friends, Colonel Jeffery, is alerted to Thornhill's disappearance by his faithful dog, Hector, and investigates his whereabouts. He is joined by Johanna, who wants to know what happened to her lover, Mark Ingestrie.

Johanna's suspicions of Sweeney Todd's involvement lead her to dress up as a boy and enter Todd's employment, after his last assistant, Tobias Ragg, has been incarcerated in a madhouse. Eventually, the full grisly horror of Todd's activities are uncovered when the dismembered remains of hundreds of his victims are discovered in the crypt underneath St. Dunstan's church.

Meanwhile, Mark Ingestrie, who has been imprisoned in the cellars beneath the pie shop and put to work as the cook, escapes via the lift used to bring the pies up from the cellar into the pie-shop. Here he makes the following startling announcement to the customers of that establishment:

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