Peaky Blinders starring Cillian Murphy will end after Season 6. - handout
THE hit television series Peaky Blinders is making waves at home and abroad with its gritty depiction of organised crime in Birmingham, UK at the turn of the last century.
Is it true that the show is based on an actual gang in Birmingham during the late nineteenth century?
Verdict:
PARTIALLY TRUE
Peaky Blinders, which concluded its series finale earlier in April, may be a fictional story of the Birmingham underworld.
Still, it is actually based on the historically proven existence of a street gang by the same name.
Unlike the TV series which portrayed them as a group led by adults who conducted organised crimes, the real Peaky Blinders were a group of rebellious violent teenagers who still committed crimes nonetheless.
However, similar to the show, the history of the Peaky Blinders started in Small Heath, Birmingham between 1890 and 1910.
According to English historian Carl Chinn, whose great-grandfather happened to be a member of the gang, the term Peaky Blinders was first used in the press after a brutal assault took place at a pub in Birmingham.
On March 23, 1890, a young man by the name of George Eastwood was having a drink at The Rainbow Pub when Thomas Mucklow, George Groom and a third unknown man entered the pub and started insulting Eastwood for drinking a ginger beer.
Chinn said according to the Birmingham Mail, Eastwood was later brutally assaulted on his way home from the pub by the trio - he was kicked and stomped with steel toe boots and slashed with belt buckles.
A bloodied Eastwood managed to escape the attack with his life and sought shelter at a nearby house until the police arrived, which sent the trio running. Mucklow was the only one who was arrested.
The Birmingham Mail then reported the assault shortly afterwards, saying that the terrible attack was carried out by a gang of Peaky Blinders and the name stuck with the gang ever since.
Legend has it that the members of this gang would put disposable razor blades into the peak of their caps and use it to slash across the forehead of their enemies in a fight, hence causing blood to go into the eyes to blind them, as seen on the show.
However, Chinn debunked this, saying the real reason they were called Peaky Blinders was that the peak of their caps were usually worn so low that it hid their eyes on one side while showing off their quiff hairstyle on the other.
Among the prominent members of the gang include Harry Fowles or Baby-Faced Harry, Stephen McNickle, David Taylor and Thomas Gilbert who became known as Kevin Mooney and was said to have inspired the main character of the TV series, Thomas Shelby.
Sources;
1. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Peaky-Blinders/
2. https://youtu.be/yh9I9NRckIA
3. https://youtu.be/ZWxkQAhp_Do
