I’ve enjoyed watching the British
crime drama Peaky Blinders on Netflix, although I know the show is historically
inaccurate.
Meilan Sally at
Smithsonian.com offers s piece on the real Birmingham street gang.
The British screenwriter
Steven Knight took inspiration from his father’s stories of “incredibly well
dressed,” “incredibly powerful” gangsters active in turn-of-the-century England
when he invented the Shelby clan—the family of razor blade-wielding mobsters at
the heart of his BBC drama “Peaky Blinders.” But it turns out that the
Birmingham gang that lends the series its name actually existed, albeit in a
different form than the family-centered criminal enterprise.
The real-life Peaky
Blinders weren’t quite as successful as the rags-to-riches Shelbys, whose
criminal network evolves from a small local faction to a multi-country
powerhouse over the course of the show’s five seasons. Still, the two share a
number of core similarities: namely, savvy fashion sense, a brutal disregard
for the law and a member base made up largely of young working-class men. These
youths, hardened by the economic deprivation rampant in industrial England,
created what Historic U.K.’s Jessica Brain deems a “violent, criminal and
organized” subculture.
As historian Carl Chinn,
author of “The Real Peaky Blinders” tells the Birmingham Mail’s Zoe
Chamberlain, the main difference between the fictionalized Peaky Blinders and
their historical counterparts is timing. Although the television drama is set
during the 1920s and '30s, the actual Birmingham group rose to prominence
closer to the 1890s.
You can read the rest of
the piece via the below link:
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