In the original version of the tale, Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims by pulling a lever as they sit in his barber chair. His victims fall backward down a revolving trap door into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. In case they are alive, Todd goes to the basement and “polishes them off” (slitting their throats with his razor). In some adaptations, the murdering process is reversed, with Todd slitting his customers’ throats before dispatching them into the basement through the revolving trap door. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs Lovett his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend and/or lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh 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 door to St Dunstan’s Church and is connected to Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage.

Needless to say, the infamous tale is just that: a tale.