Miss Claudetta Mincey, a meat pie vendor, strikes a diabolical business arrangement with the "Demon Barber," Sweeney Todd.  Todd "dispatches" customers in his barber chair, dropping them into the cellar, never to be seen again except as ingredients in Miss Mincey's meat pies.  But Sanitary Inspector Jack Heartright discovers a trouser button in one of the pies, and, with the help of the heroine, apprentice piemaker Cherry Goodenough, eventually brings the villains to justice.