PEAKY Blinders Tommy Shelby is one of — to the grimy streets of post-war Birmingham.
The show’s gangsters are based on a gang in the West Midland city in the late 19th century, but was the show’s lead character Tommy Shelby a real person?
Was Tommy Shelby a real person?
None of the names of people previously reported to have been in the real Peaky Blinders‘ heyday have Shelby as a surname.
Cillian Murphy’s character Thomas Shelby may have been a work of fiction, but the real gang’s antics were just as dramatic, violent and dark as the show makes out.
Billy Kimber however, a character in the show’s first season, was the name of an actual gangster from Birmingham.
Professor Carl Chinn, a Birmingham-based historian, began researching these infamous Brummie gangs back in the 1980s.
He then wrote a book called The Real Peaky Blinders which has brought the history of his beloved hometown into the spotlight.
He said: “It’s really interesting to look back at the mythologized version of the story and the reality.
“There was no real Tommy Shelby and the Peaky Blinders were around in the 1890s and yet the series is set in the 1920s.”
Who were the Peaky Blinders?
Professor Chinn’s findings suggest the Peaky Blinders were followed by a large pre-war gang called the Brummagem Boys – a “loose collection of pick-pockets, racecourse thieves and pests who were gaining a lot of power”.
By the 1920s, a group called The Birmingham Gang emerged – many members of which were from the Brummagem Boys.
It is much debated as whether the Peaky Blinders were a single gang or a term that referred to a number of violent youths.
They went on to become the most feared and notorious gangs in the country – led by Billy Kimber, a character in the show’s first season.
Philip Gooderson, author of The Gangs of Birmingham, states that the Peaky Blinders originated as one gang but the term later became generic.
Is the BBC One show based on a true story?
The origins of the term ‘Peaky Blinders’ remains a mystery.
The BBC One drama’s title was inspired by the existence of a gang in the Midlands in the late 19th century with the same name.
Some people believe the gang’s name came from the brutal practice of stitching razor blades into the peak of one’s cap.
Others believe the term derives from the use of the cap to disguise their faces from their victims to avoid being detected and recognised.
‘Blinder’ is also known to be a local slang from the time period which was used as a description for someone with a suave dress sense and persona.
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