top of page

Sweeny Todd of Fleet Street

Hen and Chicken Court is a narrow, confined dead-end alleyway that leads off Fleet Street; one of several such passages and corridors that have grown up over the centuries around this area of London known for its printing and publishing industries.

Now I'm no detective, but I am guessing that originally it was a place that sold.... poultry.

However it went on to become notorious as the premises of Sweeny Todd's barber shop.

The story of Sweeny Todd was one of the most popular and enduring Victorian melodramas that has gone on to achieve the status of urban legend.

The story goes that Sweeny Todd slit the throats of his clients as they relaxed in the barber chair, dropping their corpses through a hole in the floor and transporting them via a network of dingy, unlit and downright creepy tunnels to the nearby baker shop of his lover, Margery Lovett in Bell Yard.

In true Bake Off style, Mrs Lovett used the remains along with a couple of egg yolks and a touch of salt to create some of the most delicious, highly regarded and much sought after pies.

Ketchup anyone?

bottom of page