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Audiences are finally getting ready to return to the world of “Peaky Blinders” in the critically acclaimed TV series’ new movie continuation, “The Immortal Man.” The British series followed the exploits of a Birmingham-based gang, the Peaky Blinders, from 1919 up to 1934. Series creator Steven Knight may have invented Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby and his family, but the Peaky Blinders were a real gang, operating in Birmingham in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The series reimagined the real gang’s history and opted to mix myth and reality where the Blinders’ iconic flat caps were concerned.
The TV series shows the Peaky Blinders wearing flat caps with concealed razor blades sewn into their brim. According to the series, as well as urban legends surrounding the real Peaky Blinders, members of the gang would use these blades in their caps’ peaks to blind their enemies, giving the gang their name. However, this account is apocryphal.
Speaking to Birmingham Mail in 2014, historian Carl Chinn (author of “The Real Peaky Blinders”) explained that razor blades “were only beginning to come in from the 1890s and were a luxury item, much too expensive for the Peaky Blinders to have used.” The real Blinders were largely working class and likely wouldn’t have had the money for such items. “And any hard man would tell you it would be very difficult to get direction and power with a razor blade sewn into the soft part of a cap,” Chinn added, explaining the impracticalities of the Blinders’ supposedly defining weaponry.
Where Peaky Blinders diverges from real history
The Blinders’ bladed caps are just one example of “Peaky Blinders” twisting history to suit its storytelling. In his interview with Birmingham Mail, Chinn explained that this urban myth started out as “a romantic notion brought about in John Douglas’s novel, ‘A Walk Down Summer Lane.'”
Chinn also pointed out that the real Blinders were most active in the 1890s, not the post-WWI period of the TV series. In fact, by the 1920s, when the series is set, the Peaky Blinders had been supplanted the Birmingham Gang. This gang and their real-life leader, Billy Kimber, appeared on the first season of “Peaky Blinders,” where Kimber was portrayed by Charlie Creed-Miles. Kimber would later be overthrown by the Sabini Gang, led by Darby Sabini, who was played by Noah Taylor on the second season of “Peaky Blinders.” In this way, “Peaky Blinders” can almost be considered an alternate history, looking at what might have happened had the Blinders retained their grip on Birmingham after the First World War.
Other real-life history that was woven into the series included the rise of Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists. On “Peaky Blinders,” Mosley was played by Sam Claflin and survived an assassination attempt masterminded by Tommy Shelby. In real life, Mosley was interned during the Second World War.