The inspiration behind the BBC seriesPeaky Blindersis found in the real-life gang of Irish men that took to the streets of Birmingham, starting with petty crime and moving up to thievery and working for the government.Peaky Blinderspremiered in 2013, and took viewers on a journey of the street gang in the shadow of World War I and through the dark alleyways of Birmingham. A lot of audience members who watch the crime drama began wondering if the story was based on true events.
The creator of the series, Steven Knight, has revealed that theShelby clan was fictional, but that the Peaky Blinders were a real gang. They were ruthless and used hats with sewed-in razor blades to control the streets of Birmingham. The gang used several different methods of extortion, robbery, smuggling, murder, fraud, and assault to get what they wanted and had no issues with how far they would go. They terrorized their home streets from the 1880s to the 1910s.
In the show, Knight took some creative liberties when creating the Shelby clan. Nonetheless, here is the true story behind the BBC seriesPeaky Blindersthat was once a real threat in England.
The Real Peaky Blinders Gang
The Peaky Blinders gang did not just pop up in the 1920s, but rather the men who made up this gang belonged to various backstreet gangs in Birmingham starting in the 1890s through the 20th Century. However, their story goes back much further. Thomas Shelby, in the show, comes off as wealthy and influential in the streets of Birmingham, but the real gang was impoverished, was not made up of one family, and way younger. The Peaky Blinders started out in economic hardship in low-class Britain, pick-pocketing locals and blackmailing business owners in the 1880s.
After the Great Potato Famine, the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic movements allowed the gangs to rise up due to relentless hate speech telling citizens that the Irish were cannibals and their religious leaders were pick-pockets and liars.Oxford Academicdetails the Murphy Riots of June 1867, which saw 100,000 people take to the streets to demolish Irish homes. To defend themselves, the Irish created slogging gangs and started retaliating against the police, which led to a young generation of Peaky Blinders by the 1880s and 1890s. The gang was able to survive until about the 1920s.
The Rise to Power and the Fall of the Backstreet Gang
The BBC series shows that the gang led by Thomas Shelby was organized and a well-oiled machine. That is far from the actual truth of the Peaky Blinders.All That is Interestingexplains that a man by the name of Thomas Mucklow started the gang and could never really nail down a name for his gang. Mucklow was a ruthless leader who seemed to want to start fights with bar patrons and even police officers without any cause. Members of the gang were usually found in jail for minor offenses like bicycle thefts, but that didn’t mean murder was off the table. The Peaky Blinders were the main suspects for killing the constable and a few other second-class citizens of Birmingham.
Peaky Blinders were often involved with skirmishes using belts, blades, and firearms against the law or rival gangs. The gang created a name of ruffianism that frightened the citizens of Birmingham. The people of the town tried rising against the gang by having a call to action that seemed to go nowhere. By the 1900s, the gang started to slowly fade away and the name Peaky Blinders was nothing but a nursery rhyme. The gang tried entering the horse-racing business against the rival gang who owned it — the Birmingham Boys. The Birmingham Boys pushed the Peaky Blinders into obscurity and by 1920 the Irish gang had completely disappeared.
The Series' Accuracy to the Real-Life Gang
The BBC series created by Knight has been questioned on its accuracy ever sincePeaky Blinderswas created. As the setting of his show is placed in the 1920s, it is quick to say that it is not as accurate as it could be. The Peaky Blinders were a real gang, but the show is loosely based on some of the real events that happened to the gang. Thomas Shelby and the Shelby clan were created for television, but the post-traumatic stress that the characters were dealing with was absolutely correct.
Knight is a native to Birmingham, who was interested in bringing his family history into the light as his own uncle had been a Peaky Blinder. His uncle was also the inspiration behindTommy Shelby’s character, and he quickly decided that accuracy wasn’t something he was concerned with if he wanted to tell a good story. Knight toldGQthat his father would tell him stories of the gang where the Peaky Blinders would surround a table piled with coins, cigar smoke everywhere, and beer pints in hand, which made him want to create the mythology of the Shelbys.
