Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
NEWS QUIZ OF THE WEEK GANGSTERS
1
Dippy the dinosaur will return to which museum after touring the UK?
2
Which European country has the Duchess of Cambridge visited this week?
3
A shopworker was awarded £3,000 after a tribunal found she was unfairly sacked for eating what?
4
Actress Anna Karen, who died this week aged 85, starred in which popular 1970s sitcom?
5
Which Olympic gold medallist has announced he is to retire and take up coaching? 6
Which takeaway meal could soon top £10 due to rising costs?
7
The private jet of which rock legend had to make an emergency landing in 80mph winds?
8
Which pro dancer announced she is to leave Strictly after seven years?
9
Where has been named the kindest city in the UK, according to a new poll?
10
Valuable props have been stolen from which TV show?
They’re back, for the final time. From tomorrow the men in fatal flat caps we now know as The Peaky Blinders will be going about their business on the shadowy, coal-dusted streets of Birmingham.
Series six of the BBC hit, sadly without the late
Helen Mccrory as Aunt
Polly, will be a dramatic finale for Steven Knight’s epic portrayal of a post
First World War gang.
With its modern soundtrack and stunning sets, it’s always been vividly violent
– but how true to real life?
Birmingham historian
Prof Carl Chinn has personal insight into the real Peaky Blinders – his great-grandad,
Edward Derrick, was one.
But he makes clear the term was a generalisation for a vio-lent thug, not a gang name.
“He attacked police, was convicted for assault on an officer, sent down for three years for a vicious attack on a man he attacked with a shovel and followed up by striking on the skull with a chopper,” says Prof Chinn.
But what of the Shelbys, their allies and foes? Here
Prof Chinn describes their real-life equivalents.
The Sheldons
These three violent brothers – Samuel, John and Joseph – were Peaky writer Steven Knight’s dad’s maternal uncles and the seed for the Shelbys – but, in truth, unlike them.
Violent, definitely, but not influential or rich, and they certainly weren’t chiselled or strapping (Samuel, born in 1869, was 5ft 1ins). And they didn’t wear flat caps.
Instead, they opted for Billycock bowler hats. In fact, one saved Samuel Sheldon’s life.
Prof Chinn describes how a rival gang burst into Sheldon’s local one night with revolvers. “One man hit him on the head with a metal cosh and, as he fell, another fired two shots, one went through his hat, the other struck him on the side of the head but didn’t kill him.
“The hat was a Billycock – the working man’s bowler hat. That was worn by the original Peaky Blinders.”
The Sheldons were responsible for the worst gang war in Birmingham history, against Billy Beach’s men, while Samuel “was a really nasty man”, says Prof Chinn.
“They beat people up for the love of it. They liked battling each other, constable baiting, and bullied the decent majority of the poor among which they lived.
“There was none of the honour of the Shelbys. In 1889 Samuel and others go to the house of a woman, smash the windows and commit a ‘most disgusting assault’ according to the newspapers. She was 16.”
In the show he’s
the dapper leader of the London gang, in reality he was a “burly” Brummie, closest to Tommy Shelby’s (Cillian Murphy) character, and England’s first major gang leader.
Originally a street fighter he used to punch men in the solar plexus so hard it would make them soil themselves, says Prof Chinn.
After a stint ripping off racecourse bookies, he leads the Birmingham Boys, a collective of smaller gangs, then heads to the capital in 1912.
“He moves to London and pals up with George Sage from Camden Town Gang and Wal Mcdonald, a leading figure in the Elephant Boys,” says Prof Chinn.
“The Birmingham Boys were ruling the
and North. Kimber wants to take over the racecourse rackets down south – and in 1920, with his London allies, he does.” It is only when, in 1921, a vicious gang war erupts – the first in Britain – between Kimber and the London Sabini gang, that he loses his southern territory and eventually goes straight.
Ottavio “Darby” Sabini
In the show he’s dressed like a mafia don, but the real figure was Angloitalian – and never wore elegant suits. “He was known for his flat cap and collarless shirt,” says Prof Chinn.
In March 1921 Sabini’s gang went to war with Kimber’s.
The Sabinis are successful and, after a truce, are declared bosses of the southern racecourses. “He becomes the most powerful gangster in London,” says Chinn.
Sabini’s mob become the first organised crime gang in London.
Alfie Solomon
Alfie Solomon (Tom Hardy’s Alfie Solomons in the show) was one of the most dangerous men in Britain, says Prof Chinn. “He killed a man, but got away with manslaughter.”
Rather than the orthodox Jewish Eastender Hardy plays, he was a secular Jew, from North London.
He was part of the wider Sabini gang and integral in sparking the war between The Birmingham Boys and the Sabinis after being battered when he refused to give a Birmingham thug a £30 bet on credit at Sandown.
Prof Chinn says: “He was a really nasty character, but not deranged like Hardy’s character.”
The Peaky women
Prof Chinn hasn’t found any Aunt Polls in his research, women were kept separate from the gangs. But the mums, sisters and wives of Peaky Blinders were tough. Samuel Sheldon’s wife Ellen attacked a neighbour for giving evidence against her husband, but Prof Chinn “wouldn’t put her in the same league as Aunty Poll”.
More inspirational, his own greatgrandmother Ada left her violent husband Edward.
“I found the divorce papers in the National Archives,” explains Prof Chinn. “I read he had beat her, threatened to murder her.”
Weapons
The Peaky Blinder flatcap razorblades are a myth.
But gangs did have favoured weapons. “The Peaky Blinders liked the buckled belt,” he says. “The racecourse gangs from London, they favoured the cut-throat razor.”
Prof Chinn is the author of Peaky Blinders The Real Story and Peaky Blinders The Legacy ( John Blake, 2019