All language subtitles for The.Real.Peaky.BlinderS01E01

In 1890,

an incident occurs

in these back streets...

..that reveals a phenomenon
that will rock Victorian society

and lead to the explosion
of organised crime in Britain.

On March 22nd 1890, George Eastwood,
an inoffensive chap,

goes into the Rainbow pub.

He's a teetotaller and is enjoying
a ginger beer when three tough nuts

start to insult him.

George decides to go home.

When he gets outside,
he hears the shout,

"Give it to him hot, lads!"
They savagely attack him.

He's in hospital for three weeks
and he has to be trepanned -

a piece of the bone
from his skull removed.

So what's so important about
this particular violent incident?

Well, it's the first time that
the term "Peaky Blinders" is used,

and the legend is born.

The real Peaky Blinders
go on to become the godfathers

of organised crime in the 1920S.

There was this organised gang
system that was every bit

as bad and good as the one
that operated in Chicago.

But their origins stretch back
50 years earlier, to the 1870s.

These young men
aren't focused on moneymaking.

They're waging street war
for status.

They're about fighting.

They attack policemen.
They fight each other.

It's the first modern youth cult.

The gangs erupt from Birmingham's
back streets, where they face

poverty and racism.

He denounces them as "cannibals".

This is the story of the rise
and fall...

..of Britain's first modern
mass gang movement...

..who'd change our cities forever.

My dad was the main source
of stories about the Peaky Blinders,

and the story my dad told

that really made me want to
tell this as a drama

is that he was probably
eight years old and his dad

gave him a message and said,
"Take these to the Peaky Blinders."

And he was terrified,
and he walked in

and he said inside there were
eight men, immaculately dressed,

a table covered in coins, in a place
where no-one had any money.

And he said the men were all
drinking beer and whisky

out of jam jars because they
wouldn't spend any of that money

on something like a glass or a cup.

Every penny they had
was spent on how they looked.

And it just made me think
that in an environment

where you have no control,
you have no authority,

everything's pretty grim,

the only thing you can do
is make yourself the thing.

The Sheldons were his uncles

and they were the people
who were sitting around the table.

And it wasn't until many years later
when I started researching this

that I started seeing
the name Sam Sheldon.

Steven Knight set his drama
in Birmingham after World War I,

when the Sheldons, the inspiration
for Knight's Shelbys,

are well-established.

But this film explores the early
days of the Peaky Blinders.

I've done a lot of research
into the Sheldons,

and three of the brothers,
John, Samuel and Joseph,

were notorious criminals.

This is really important.

This is a photo of Samuel Sheldon.

He's only five foot one
and a quarter,

but he's not a man
that you want to mess with.

He was involved in riots,
brutal beatings, shootings,

and the worst gang war
in the city's history.

He would be my Tommy Shelby.

I wouldn't want to meet him
in a dark alley.

That is for certain.

Because Samuel Sheldon
gets done in the 1880s

for attacking the police in a gang.

He gets done for attacking
other people and throwing stones.

The Sheldons have their own gang,
but it's obvious

that it's from a period earlier
than when the drama is set.

This mugshot of Sam Sheldon
isn't the only one.

So this is the Birmingham City
Police mugshot book.

Here he is. Samuel Sheldon.

Who many people might associate

with the fictional Tommy Shelby
character from the Peaky Blinders,

who was part of the Sheldon family,
criminal family in Birmingham.

This occasion, he was sentenced
to five years' penal servitude

for being in possession of a base
coin, which was a common offence

at the time, it was...
it was forgery,

forging coins, fake currency.

It's probably the biggest police
mugshot collection in the UK.

This contact with the law
gives a rare insight into

working-class history,
where so often, no records exist.

It's part of a remarkable collection
that reveals how widespread

the early Peaky Blinders were.

You can see some of
the Peaky Blinder mugshots.

You can see the date they were born,
the offences,

the date of the offence
and what punishment they received.

This is baby-faced Henry Fowler.

He and his brothers were convicted
of numerous crimes around Birmingham

in the late 1800s.

Ernest Bales here, sentenced
to two months' imprisonment

for stealing a bicycle.

Young Ernest there with his
peaked cap and his typical frown.

Looks quite hardened.

Every single one of them
has got a story to tell.

They're just a window into
another lifetime, aren't they?

This is Edward Derrick,
who I believe is an ancestor

of Carl Chinn, Professor Carl Chinn.

Looks quite surprised to be having
his photograph taken.

The Peaky Blinders are very close
to me and my family.

Unfortunately, my great-grandfather,
Edward Derrick, was a Peaky Blinder.

His older brother was a leader of
the Sparkbrook Slogging Gang,

and Edward, my great-grandfather,
followed him for violence.

He got done for assault,
for assaulting the police as well.

He was a petty criminal - so petty
that on one occasion, he actually

stole a side of bacon from
outside a pork butcher's shop.

But he was a nasty, vile man,
and he used to beat up

my great-grandmother.
So he's not a man to be admired.

By trawling the records of hundreds
of Peaky Blinders, it's clear

that the early Peakies
are a Birmingham-wide phenomenon.

The real Peaky Blinders are not
just a 1920s gang, one gang,

the real Peaky Blinders
are the men and youths

who belong to numerous
backstreet gangs in Birmingham

in the 1890s
and turn of the 20th century,

but their roots go back
much further.

They're just known then as
street ruffians, but from 1872,

they have a name - slogging gangs,
and that name is from the word

slogger, which means to hit somebody
with a fierce blow.

It's the start of an urban movement

that will ultimately transform
attitudes to the working classes

and life in the inner cities.
The rise of these slogging gangs

is mirrored in other industrial
centres across Britain.

By the late 19th century,
we're hearing lots of reports

of territorial youth gangs
in England's major cities,

and without exception, the gangs
are located in the working-class

residential districts,
so these will be the factory

or workshop districts of cities like
Birmingham and Manchester.

The rampant ruffianism
of the back streets.

That's the problem
of the big cities -

Birmingham, Manchester, Salford,
London and Liverpool.

These are the shock cities
of the new industrial age.

There's nowhere else like this
on Earth,

and there's an intensity to life.

From the 1870s,
Birmingham is the industrial heart

of the greatest manufacturing
nation on the planet.

But the price is high.

Charles Dickens describes the city
as a vision of hell.

Life expectancy is below 45 years.

Around one in five children die
before the age of five.

People are working long, long hours.

They're working in hot, noisy,
often dangerous conditions.

Into this world are born the members
of this early gang movement,

the precursors
to the Peaky Blinders.

Certain names crop up more often
than others.

One of them, who's central
to our story of the Peaky Blinders,

is called Thomas Joyce.

A mugshot of Joyce hasn't survived,
but we know about him

because he makes the papers.

The first mention I find
of Thomas Joyce in the local press

is in September 1874, he and a pal
from the Park Street gang

are on Deritend Bridge
just over there, and they attack

William Smallwood, a top fighter
from the nearby Milk Street gang.

They use very filthy language.

They draw their knives, Smallwood
strikes out with his buckle belt,

Joyce and his pal end up in court
with their heads bandaged,

and the magistrates look at him
and go,

"You've had a good thrashing -
taste of your own medicine."

A ticking-off from the law
won't deter Joyce.

He's already a hardened gang leader
with a taste for violence.

Making money doesn't motivate him.

Fighting does.

Thomas Joyce would have become
captain of the Park Street gang

because he was the toughest,
the nastiest,

the most brutal in a fight.
What we need to understand is

why was fighting so important to so
many poor and working-class youths?

They owned nothing, but the one
thing they did own was the street.

That belonged to them.

So territory and masculinity
come together.

If you can defend your street
and beat another street,

you enhance your own status.

There's a ritualistic component
to confrontations between gangs.

I think there's lots of shouting
at the outset,

lots of threats being issued.

These are not criminal gangs
in a conventional sense,

so they're not organised
for the purposes of

street robbery or theft.

They're much more fighting gangs.

So really, what they're interested
in is defending their territory.

There was much more acceptance
of violence.

I think people were
much more violent then.

There was sort of an acceptance
of...not casual violence,

but just that there would be a fight

and men would fight each other
and people would get hurt.

To understand why Thomas Joyce
becomes a Peaky Blinder,

Carl has been tracing his story.

He's here in the 1871 census.

You can see him, there he is
with his mum and dad

and his younger brother.
He's 18.

His parents are both from Ireland,
and they settled here in Park Lane,

near to Park Street.

It was a very poor neighbourhood.

There's a quarter of a million
people in Birmingham

living in 43,000 back-to-backs.

Birmingham's back-to-backs
are actually houses

split down the middle,

with one half facing the street
and the other a central courtyard.

The living conditions of the poor
are atrocious.

There's only one room downstairs.

The people are packed together.

It's insanitary living -
toilets are dry pan privies

shared between two or three
families.

There's one tap in a yard, perhaps
for 100 people to get cold water.

There's smoke everywhere.
It's dirty.

Life is hard, and poverty kills.

There are courts in the very centre
of Birmingham

where filth accumulates on filth.

Where courtyards are
so many acres of stink.

And where doorless privies
face house doors

and make decency impossible.

And where it is a danger
for a policeman to enter after dark.

Thomas Joyce lives in the squalor
of these courtyards and lanes.

But the census reveals a detail
that's surprising.

He's a youngster -
in the 1871 census,

we can see that he's a labourer.

Like most of the early Peakies,
he isn't unemployed.

He's working.

At the time, employment rates
reach a record high.

It's said that any 12-year-old
can get a job.

The overwhelming majority of gang
members are young men and adult men

who are unskilled.
Lots of them are factory workers.

They're hardworking chaps.
Others are street traders.

There might have been quite a lot
of work around, but it's badly paid

and so they haven't got
a lot of spare cash.

So what they're doing is that
they're looking to enjoy themselves

in the cheapest way possible.

From 1851 to 1881, the average age
was just under 25.

The middle class birth-rate
declines,

but it doesn't drop
in poorer areas.

So in poorer neighbourhoods,
there's lots of youngsters,

lots of children,
and they're out on the street.

They've got no gardens,
they've got no front rooms,

so the street's their playground.

If we think about these boys
being quite marginalised,

often in work that has limits
to its satisfaction,

there's a limit to how much they can
progress in life.

So perhaps the gangs
give them something different.

It's a testing ground
for their masculinity.

It's somewhere where they can
prove themselves.

There's a great deal of loyalty
and identification with the gangs,

and gangs have, you know,
a particular association

with specific areas, streets
or clusters of streets.

And so we have boys
who were associated

with named gangs in this period.

There may have been
one other explosive ingredient

that sucks Thomas Joyce,

the son of Irish parents,
into the gangs.

Racism.

Irish immigration to Birmingham

happens in a big rush
in the 1800s,

and a large amount of that happens
in the 1840s and the early 1850s.

So you have the population,
if you look at the census,

of Irish-born people in Birmingham

basically doubling between 1841
and 1851.

And that great rush of migration
into Birmingham

is happening because of the disaster
of the Great Famine in Ireland.

The famine of 1845 to 1851 leads to
death by starvation and disease

of more than a million Irish
men, women and children.

Up to two million are forced
to emigrate.

The Irish who moved to Birmingham
are often living

in the very poor, very central areas
of Birmingham -

streets such as Park Street.

Now, those areas
are very badly served by

things such as water and drainage
and sanitation.

These new immigrants, like
the Joyce family in Park Street,

are confronted by age-old
anti-Catholic hatred.

And in 1867, that hatred
is brought to the boil

by a Protestant rabble-rouser,
William Murphy.

William Murphy works as a preacher,

so he moves around from town
to town,

giving fairly bloodcurdling speeches

about how English men and women
should not trust

the new Irish arrivals
who are living in their midst.

He denounces them.
He denounces them as cannibals,

and he denounces their priests
as pickpockets and liars.

In June 1867,
a mob marches on Park Street,

one of the poorest neighbourhoods
in Birmingham.

A huge number of people who view
themselves as English patriots

turn up in the Irish area
of Birmingham

and decide to smash up the homes
of the people who live there.

And at one stage, the mayor
of Birmingham estimates

that there are about 50-100,000
people in the streets

during those very riotous events.

The Murphy riots are focused
on Park Street,

which has an almost entirely
Irish-born

or second-generation
Irish population.

And the people
who live on Park Street

put up quite a fight,

and the police very much
take the sides of the people

who are attacking
those Irish residences -

and when the police do that,
really the fight is over.

And there are some very sad
descriptions then

of those Irish homes
being ransacked,

having their furniture
brought out

into the street and smashed.

It's the Irish victims of the mob
who are charged with rioting

and have their claims for
compensation turned down.

Many of them live in the same street
as the Joyce family.

And soon after this injustice,

Thomas Joyce rises through the ranks
of the Park Street gang.

The roots of the slogging gangs are
in the tail end of the 1860s,

when a number of people
in Birmingham

who are children at the time,
or teenagers at the time,

see the Murphy riots.

They see their homes being smashed.

What then happens in the 1870s
is that this group,

who've lived through that period,

have seen the way that
being skilled at things

like stone-throwing
or being part of a big group

might be a really sensible measure.

It might help you to protect
your own and your community.

So I think that is the legacy
that we then see

in some of the activities
of the 1870s.

We find names such as
the Joyce family of Park Street

being involved in
leadership positions

of the slogging gangs
in the record from the 1870s.

Thomas Joyce thrives on
this ethnic tension,

but the gang wars between Irish
and English Peakies

lead to family casualties.

By 1874, Thomas Joyce
is regarded as the captain

of the Park Street gang.

One of his men
is his younger brother, Jacky.

He's only 13.

And in February of that year,
Jacky,

along with other members of
the Park Street gang,

are involved in a disturbance
with the Milk Street gang -

their great enemies.

In that disturbance,
Jacky creeps up

behind 15-year-old
Thomas Kirkham.

There were about 20 boys standing
together at the top of a gullet.

One of the boys called out,
"Here, Kirkham!"

A witness noticed the prisoner
steal around behind Kirkham

and, throwing an arm around him,
stuck him in the neck.

He called out, "Murder!
I'm stabbed!"

Another witness saw a boy staggering
about in the middle of the road

with a knife in his neck.

The witness pulled the knife out
and assisted the boy to hospital.

Sadly, Thomas Kirkham dies
soon after.

Jacky goes to court
and there's a bit of a dispute

over how old he is.

At the start, he says he's 14.

Then he says he's 13.

Well, one of the obvious reasons
why you might give a younger age,

particularly the age of 13 or under,

is because if he's tried
at age 14 or over,

he's tried as an adult and he could
be facing the death penalty.

The judge directs the jury to
convict Jacky of murder

only if they can establish intent.

They can't.

Jacky Joyce is found guilty
of manslaughter

and sentenced to a month in prison
and five years in a reformatory.

There's a lot of kudos,
a lot of status

hinges on reputations for toughness
and for fighting prowess.

We could almost say that
some of the leading sloggers

or Peaky Blinders were
the celebrities of their age.

And we discover evidence
for this rising infamy

in a familiar place -
the media.

In 1855, tax on newspapers
is lowered,

so they're cheaper to buy.

It becomes way more accessible
to a lot more people,

including the working classes.

Birmingham Provincial Press
is really telling us

many more stories about crime
locally than ever before.

Almost if you think about
how popular reality TV is today,

it's the kind of Victorian version
of that,

of finding out what's going on
in your local area,

the crimes that have been committed,

the bad guys, the scandal.

So it becomes much more exciting
to read.

It is the birth of
the modern tabloid press.

Crime is the most commercial form
of entertainment news

in Victorian Britain,

because they're doing something
that people

can only really aspire to
in their lives.

They're actually breaking
all the rules.

It could be seen as
a form of social mobility.

By the 1870s, literacy rates
are increasing.

75% of women and 80% of men
can read.

And the education acts are really
improving people's literacy rates.

You're still leaving school
at around 13 or 14

if you're a working-class kid,
for work,

but you should have a basic level
of literacy.

There's evidence that the sloggers
desire the exposure

that the press offers.

You might well actually want to be
featured in the press

if you're a member of a gang
in this period

because it gets your name out there
and you become notorious.

So you might initially serve
some short-term prison sentences,

but then, on your release,
you've got this history -

you've been in prison,
you've survived it,

you're known as a leader of a gang.

And it isn't just
the male gang members

who are gaining notoriety
in the 1870s.

Women also play a role in
the real Peaky gangs' activities.

Here we've got
the female prisoner ledger.

This spans a number of decades,
up to the early 1930s.

There's probably some of
the Peaky Blinders' molls in here.

The girlfriends, the wives

of some of those
young Birmingham criminals.

Just rich with details.

The majority of offences on any
given page are theft offences.

There's the odd assault.

There's prostitution,
running brothels.

And of course,
the same as with the men,

a lot of them will have stories
of personal tragedy and poverty

and alcoholic parents,

no money, really just struggling
to survive.

So a lot of the theft offences
could just be to survive,

to get food, to get money for food.

There is an awful lot of misery
amongst these pages.

There are some very young prisoners
in these books.

This lady here, Leah Jinks -
she was...

Her occupation was a polisher.

She was arrested for assault.

So she looks like
the kind of character

who could have been associating
with Peaky Blinder gangs.

She looks tough as nails.

And she's only 18 years of age.

Here we have Alice Jackson,

who was arrested for
attempted murder in 1911.

And she was sentenced to
two years' imprisonment,

so there must have been some kind
of extenuating circumstances.

Some very typical hairstyles
of the time.

Lots of wonderful hats.

Look at those shoulder pads!

And the fur collar!

I mean, they're out in
their Sunday best.

But it's really telling,
all of the ladies on that page

have all been arrested for stealing.

So they're dressed up,
they're in their best attire,

they're trying to blend in with

maybe a more affluent class
of people.

And then they've been apprehended
for stealing -

stealing watches, stealing boots,
stealing shirts, clothing.

Historian Kate Lister
has been uncovering

how some of the women Peakies
were just as involved as the men.

In the summer of 1874, a riot
broke out in Digbeth, Birmingham.

Witnesses said there were about 500,
maybe 600 rioters

attacking police, smashing windows
and generally destroying property.

And it wasn't just men
who were doing the rioting.

15-year-old Julia Giblin
was among the arrested rioters.

She'd been seen by witnesses
carrying stones in her apron

to throw at the police.

Julia was not an isolated incident.

We have reports in some of the
larger-scale gang confrontations

of girls fighting side by side
with the boys,

and they're involved in assaults
on the police

or in assaults or attempts to
intimidate witnesses.

And it seems that that's where often
the girls and young women

are most actively taking part
in the violence.

Women like Julia Giblin upset
Victorian sensibilities no end.

They were not the angel
in the house,

they were not demure, submissive
or quiet.

They were loud, aggressive
and violent.

But in Victorian Birmingham,
in the streets,

you had to be loud if you were
going to be heard at all.

Girls and young women
associated with the gangs,

they're adopting their hairstyles
and their clothing

to show their sense of affiliation
to the gang.

So the young women are also
sporting very long fringes.

They're wearing coloured
neckerchiefs.

They're wearing coloured
or striped skirts.

There are reports of a Peakies moll
in Birmingham

wearing a tremendously elaborate hat
adorned with feathers and poppies.

So she's really cutting quite
a striking figure on the streets.

In a world where
you don't have much,

being a big player
on the street corner

can feel like quite a lot.

And the way you dress and look
are keys to that identity -

for the men as much as the women.

# New generation

# Diamonds in the rough

# The future makers were in it
for the rush

# Legends in the making

# Unstoppable at heart

# Won't see us coming

# When we leave a mark

# Better get ready... #

Kate Lister is meeting
barber Dale Sampey,

who often gets requests for
Peakies-style haircuts.

It's always inspired by the TV show,

where it's really short on
the sides, long over the top.

It looks a little bit like a mop
when it's finished.

The original haircut was actually...

It was even more severe than it is
in the TV show.

This is George Williams.

Wow!
KATE LAUGHS

As you can... He looks a character,
doesn't he?

George is ultimately convicted
of manslaughter

and serves life imprisonment.

But even as he's arrested
for murder,

he still defiantly sports
his Peaky hairdo.

This is super fashionable.

It's basically all shaven
and cut very close to the head,

apart from a fringe,
which they keep very long.

That's awesome, that is, isn't it?
It really is.

So this is quite a severe
and extreme version of the haircut,

but they were all sporting
variations on this.

But when they first
came into existence,

they were wearing hats
much more like this

that were known as billycock hats,

and they would fashion the front
so they were peaked

and they would have the hat
pulled down over one eye,

hence Peaky Blinder,

and their very long fringe or quiff

styled across their forehead
to the other side.

So eventually, the billycock hat
is replaced by the flat cap,

which is more recognisable
from the Peaky Blinders today,

although they didn't keep
razor blades in it. That's a myth.

They didn't have the safety razors
at the time,

they couldn't have done it.

They often have
what was known as a daff,

which is a really brightly coloured
scarf tied round their neck.

Really bright buttons,
pearl buttons,

and they would have bell-bottom
trousers on as well,

so you can imagine
the figures that these guys cut.

They do look like they're in a gang.

You would know that these people
were together,

and that was the idea,
this was their uniform.

They have been described
as the first modern youth cult,

and I think that really makes sense.

Their clothing, their sense
of style, even their own language,

they really do look like
the forerunners of

the later 20th-century youth cults
like punk and so on.

There are even reports of
gang members having clothes

specially made for them.

We have a report from Manchester
of a young man in a Scotland gang

whose sweetheart has apparently

knitted him a distinctive
pair of socks.

And then in Salford, the so-called
King of the Scuttlers

John-Joseph Hillier, somebody knits
him a sweater with that legend -

King of the Scuttlers -
sewn onto the front,

and he takes to parading the streets
of Salford showing off that jumper.

So that moniker, which was really
intended to shame him,

has absolutely the reverse effect.

The Peaky Blinder, this product
of poverty, squalor

and slum environment, was
a terror to respectable people

40-odd years ago.

He was also a terror to the police.

He went in pairs along Summer Lane
every Saturday night,

but he never molested
any member of my family.

Perhaps as we lived on his doorstep,

we were treated as members
of the gang.

By courtesy or adoption,
the local bullies would always

give me curt nods of comradeship.

The street gangs are all about
territorial conflict.

But there is one other element
that defines them.

Gambling.

And the next time
that we come across

Thomas Joyce's Park Street gang,

they're engaging in one of the
favourite pastimes of all the gangs.

Pitch-and-toss is a simple game.

A group of young men or lads
will gather,

and they'll have a target,

and they will pitch their pennies
towards the target.

The one that pitches 'em
closest to the target

then is allowed to pick them all up.

So they get them,

and now it's the tossing.

They're tossed up into the air...

..and the coins that come up heads,
he keeps.

Thomas Joyce's gang
are playing for pennies,

but street gambling games are part
of a much larger tradition.

So gambling
was pretty much ingrained

in English life, everyday life.

If you were the industrial
working class or the rural poor,

you liked the idea of
a bit of a flutter.

My mum would say my grandad
was the big gambler, and he would...

He had one suit and she would
take his suit to the pawnbrokers

on a Monday to get cash
so that he could bet,

and then when he got paid
on the Thursday,

he would retrieve his suit,
wear the suit over the weekend,

and then back into the pawnbrokers
on the Monday.

So that was the routine.

I think gambling - and beer -
were solace for people

who didn't really have
much source of solace.

I think it's about escapism,

and it's about trying to find
some fun in what is

an otherwise relatively bleak
existence compared to today.

So they wanted to kind of make
the most of what little bit

of leisure time they got.

I think people gambled
because they didn't have much else

in terms of hope for change.

So they weren't going to get out
of this situation by working,

because they worked as hard
as they could anyway.

And the only possible way of getting
sort of even a few moments

of something different was to win.

Until 1826, there'd even been
a national lottery in Britain.

But infected with prudish
Victorian values,

the middle classes want the fun
to stop.

As the 19th century wore on,
the campaign against gambling,

the puritanical campaign
against gambling,

the religious campaigns,
the moral disdain

that many of the elite felt
for poor people gambling,

gathered pace and conspired to make
working-class gambling illegal.

In this powder keg of antagonism,

Thomas Joyce's gang
come up against the law.

HE WHISTLES

When the police break up
their pitch and toss games,

the gangs fight back.

It's a regular occurrence
on the streets of Birmingham.

I'm not far from the spot
where a full-blown riot breaks out

in 1871, when a few policemen
tried to stop one of the gangs

from playing pitch and toss.

When the police tried to stop
the gambling, they're attacked

by the enraged youths.

They're called roughs,
disparagingly.

It's a really dangerous situation,
and one of the policemen involved

said that the numbers rival those
in the Murphy Riots,

the worst riots in the entire
history of Birmingham.

By the mid 1870s, the territorial
gang problem is getting worse.

Thomas Joyce's Park Street Peaky
gang is one of more than 50

throughout Birmingham.

Like his, the vast majority
are named after streets.

The phenomenon is repeated in cities

like Liverpool, Glasgow
and Manchester,

where the gangs, known as scuttlers,
often have names

inspired by real events,
like the Franco-Prussian War.

There's even a Buffalo Bill gang

after the famous frontiersman tours
his Wild West show.

There's a great moral panic
in the 1870s

around the activities of these young
men involved in slogging gangs.

The neighbourhood is so infested
by roughs of both sexes

that it is feared dangerous

for a policeman
to work the beat alone,

the mob actually hunting
and stoning him off the streets.

For five years,
Thomas Joyce's slogging gang

is one of the most feared
in Birmingham.

But then in 1875, another gang
crosses a line

when it graduates
from fighting rivals

to take on the establishment.

7th March, 1875, a riot erupts
in this street - Navigation Street -

when a mob tries to free a prisoner
from two policemen.

They're pelted with stones and mud.

PC Lines comes to help them.

He tries to beat back the crowd
with his staff

and the sergeant manages
to drag himself away.

But then, as one witness put it,
they attacked him like rats,

and somebody stabs him in the neck.

He falls, they start kicking him
on the ground.

Then more police come.
They take PC Lines to hospital.

It's really difficult for the police
to find out who's actually involved

in the Navigation Street riot.

This is a collection relating
to the murder of PC William Lines,

who was stabbed in
Navigation Street in 1875.

This is believed to be the whistle
of PC William Lines.

You can see the crucifix attached
to the whistle chain there.

This is the picture
from his funeral.

You can see it was very well
attended by his fellow officers

and members of the public.

He was the first police officer
to be stabbed to death on duty

in Birmingham, and he attended
the scene of the riot to help out

a fellow officer, and he and
a sergeant were both assaulted.

He was stabbed behind his ear

and he died in hospital
two weeks later.

This is the offender who was deemed

to be ultimately responsible for
stabbing him, Jeremiah Corkery.

And we have a couple of what I
presume are commemorative postcards,

posters produced at the time,

both kind of highlighting
the plight of Corkery.

After a trial in which 20-year-old
Corkery first pleads his innocence

and then confesses his guilt,

he's sentenced to hang at Warwick
on 27th July 1875.

He rose about 4.30,

and from that time until the moment
of his execution,

his terror
and consequent helplessness

appeared to rapidly increase.

Shortly before seven o'clock,
he was visited by Father Kelly,

and he then engaged
in religious exercises,

the last rites of
the Roman Catholic faith.

The very beauty of the morning,
however, appeared by contrast

to intensify the deathly and
shocking look of the condemned man.

His face was deadly pale,
his eyes half opened.

He trembled violently

and his knees occasionally seemed
almost to give way.

On being placed
in an upright position,

he staggered and would have fallen,

had not the warders again
been vigilant.

And in a moment, the drop fell
with a dull, heavy sound

and the unhappy murderer's body
descended with a swift rush,

being brought up at the end
of the rope with a terrible jerk.

The report on the execution
of Thomas Corkery

is intended to be moralising.

Like, "This will be
your inevitable doom.

"If you commit a crime,
a terrible fate awaits you."

On the other hand, it's quite
voyeuristic and salacious as well,

and that is what the Victorian press
plays upon.

They know this is commercial,

they know that people will actually
treat this as entertainment.

I'd say a little too much sympathy
towards Corkery

rather than PC William Lines,

who ultimately lost his life,

left a young daughter without
a father, a wife with no husband.

But there's lots of information
and sympathies towards Corkery.

Corkery becomes Birmingham slang
for striking fear into policemen.

The city is gaining a reputation
for lawlessness.

Over the next few years,
two more police officers are killed,

hundreds injured, and what was
skirmishes in the streets

now look more like
full-scale battles.

The range of numbers involved
in the fights is quite extreme.

You could have, as in 1886,

supposedly 2,000 Peaky Blinders
slugging it out.

This was not just street warfare,
it was neighbourhood warfare.

They were chucking stones
at each other,

they were fighting with
buckled belts.

It went on all afternoon and police
reinforcements had to be called in

from all over Birmingham
to put it down.

Gang violence is now out of control.

They're terrorising the vast
majority of law-abiding citizens.

It would take a new sheriff
to clean up the town.

So, here we have the tunic of
Sir Charles Haughton Rafter,

our chief constable from 1899
all the way up to 1935,

when he sadly died in office.

1899, when he joined
Birmingham City Police,

several officers
had been killed in the line of duty,

police officers were being stabbed
or assaulted every other week.

It was a really dangerous place
to work as a police officer.

So he came in, he came across
from Ireland, and he had to improve

the quality of policing, to improve
the standard of education

of his recruits, to improve
discipline, but also to try

and stamp out a lot of these really
big crime problems in the area.

Many of those recruits
come from the Irish community,

who only a generation before had
been the victims of racist mobs

as the police stood by.

Only 1% of Birmingham's population
are, by this time, Irish-born,

but they make up 7%
of the police force.

He embarks on a rapid
recruitment campaign.

The Birmingham City Police
is on demand, so what he does,

he brings in lots of young fit men.

They've got to be five foot ten,
they've got to be tough.

And the story went
in the Birmingham Police

that Rafter asked three things
of his men -

can you read, can you write,
and can you fight?

He sends out his men in pairs
in the toughest districts,

and they take the fight
to the Peaky Blinders.

It's a tough time,
and tough tactics are needed.

Rafter's strong policy is supported
by more severe sentences

against criminals,
rogues who attack policemen.

And what starts to happen
is that poorer working-class people

gain confidence in the police.

They start to report Peaky Blinders
to the police,

and the tide is slowly turned.

When Charles Haughton Rafter
sadly died in office, Birmingham

was one of the best-policed cities
in the country,

the Birmingham Police
were known throughout the world

for their professionalism,

and he left the city in
a really, really good state.

The gang violence
had all but disappeared.

Effective policing
may have curbed the problem

and changed the city for good,

but it takes a war in South Africa
to expose the poverty

that gave birth to the gangs.

Attitudes towards
the so-called slums

and slum populations of
England's cities

are really changed as a result
of the South African war

from 1898 onwards.

So, young men in their thousands
seek to enlist

to take part in the war effort,

but most of them are knocked back
on account of them not meeting

the Army's requirements
for their physiques.

So in Manchester and Salford,
you get around 12,000 young men

seeking to enlist,
8,000 of them are rejected

as not meeting
the Army's fitness requirements.

Only one in ten who heed the call of
the recruiting sergeant

are deemed fit
for full military service.

It leads to social reforms from 1904

that include free school meals
and medical examinations.

This desire to improve conditions

isn't just taken up by
the government.

A group of enlightened
philanthropists also get involved.

A few good-hearted individuals
are trying to provide alternatives

to the gangs for youngsters,

and it's their belief
in physical fitness

that has a major impact
on the decline of the gangs.

Now, one of the most important
figures in Birmingham

is Father Pinchard.

He's the High Church of England
vicar in St Jude's.

That's one of the poorest parishes
in the city.

In 1896, he starts a club
for young lads between 18 and 20.

The most important attraction -
boxing.

They've got no ring, no ropes,
they box in their clothes.

But it's really popular.

The boxing clubs don't just attract
Birmingham's Peaky Blinders.

Lads' clubs prove popular
up and down the country.

And what's really interesting
is that, by and large, they work.

By the late 1890s, reports
in Manchester and Salford

are suggesting that scuttling
is absolutely on the wane.

What the lads' clubs really do
spectacularly well is to bring in

the 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds.

So the gangs almost wither out
as the lads' clubs take root.

The lads' clubs also heavily promote
football, and football grows

very rapidly in
the late 19th century,

both as a participant sport
with teams forged at street level,

playing on the patches
of open ground.

Football also grows very rapidly
as a spectator sport.

Famous teams like Aston Villa,
Birmingham City

and Manchester City
all emerge from this movement.

And the two professional teams
in Manchester - Manchester United

and Manchester City
as they later become -

are hugely popular with people,

they're now coming together
in their tens of thousands

to watch professional football.

And this transcends the kind of
neighbourhood loyalties

that had underpinned
the scuttling conflicts.

But the final nail
in the mass gangs' coffin

comes completely
out of the blue -

from the rise of cinema.

In the first decade
of the 20th century,

there are more than 100 cinemas
opened in Manchester alone,

and young people flocked
to cinemas in droves.

Even in the years before
the First World War,

there are social commentators
reporting

that some young working-class people

are going to cinema as often
as three or four times a week.

Police officers absolutely welcome
the cinema.

To them, it's a great boon

if young people are increasingly
spending their evenings indoors.

And, of course, the other thing
that people are doing

is they're spending money
going to watch films

that they might otherwise
have spent in beer houses,

so the violence that had typically
been associated with drunkenness

begins to diminish as well.

But just as the mass Peaky problem
is waning...

..a familiar face re-emerges
from Birmingham's slums.

Sam Sheldon and his family,

the inspiration for the Shelbys
in the drama series,

have been working away
in the shadows.

They're now a powerful crime gang.

We come across the Sheldons again
in the early 20th century,

and that's when they gain infamy.

Let's have a look at one of the
newspaper reports from the period.

Look at it.
"The Birmingham Vendetta.

"Injured man's dramatic story,
accused remanded."

And they fought for four years -
brutal beatings, shootings, riots.

They fought with Billy Beach.

Beach, a hardened street fighter,
lives close to the Sheldons.

They originally fall out
over a gambling debt.

And it was a gang war that was
fought by men who were living

really close to each other
in and around

the Garrison Lane neighbourhood.

When I was growing up,
the vendetta in Garrison Lane,

for me, it was like, as a kid,

I imagined it as like a Wild West,
OK Corral shooter,

which it sort of was a bit.

But it was two families

who really didn't like each other
in Garrison Lane,

and Garrison Lane at the time
was obviously teeming with people

and was quite a lawless place.

It was finally put down in 1912.

There's various stories
about what happened to Billy Beach.

Eventually, though, he
was getting a bit too old

for all this aggravation,
and the police, it's said,

had a collection to send him
to Canada.

That phrase -
vendetta in Garrison Lane -

is just something that always evokes
a particular image,

and it was things like that

that I really wanted to get into
the Peaky Blinders.

The Garrison Lane vendetta
is one of the final acts

of the Peaky street gangs.

Fighting for fighting's sake
is fast disappearing.

Now if there's any fighting to be
done, it's all about money.

And Sam Sheldon is one of those
who recognises that change.

By the early 20th century,
the police are making things

really hard for the Peaky Blinders
in Birmingham.

So the petty criminals amongst them,
the violent petty criminals

amongst them, start to travel around
thieving and pickpocketing.

One of them is Samuel Sheldon,
and under the alias of Samuel Small,

in January 1902, he's sent down
for three months in Manchester

as a suspected person.

That's a common charge
for pickpockets.

Sheldon is most likely in Manchester

because he's using
the railway network

to move anonymously
around the country.

But the city
isn't his final destination.

He's heading for
the entertainment meccas

opened up by the railways.

They're a magnet for punters,

and for every budding
Edwardian criminal.

Horse racing
since the late 19th century

has boomed as a popular sport,

more and more racecourses
are opening.

And it's illegal
to bet for cash anywhere else,

so there's an expanding population
of better-off middle-class people.

They've got a disposable income,

they're going to racecourses
to have a bet.

Here's the best prices
in the ring...

And where there's cash,
that brings in the thieves

and the rogues like bees
to a honeypot.

Racecourses
are happy hunting grounds.

They're lightly policed,
they haven't got a lot of security,

they're very popular with crowds,
so there's people with lots of cash,

so that draws in ruffians.

And what they start to do,
these ruffians from Birmingham,

they pick-pocket, but they also
blackmail bookies for protection.

Into this world of travelling
pickpockets and rogues

comes another familiar character
from the TV series.

Billy Kimber.

In the drama series, Billy Kimber
is portrayed as a Londoner.

In real life, he's from Birmingham.

Big man, apparently,

very, very good street fighter,

cobbles fighter - a very dangerous
man to cross.

I think he had a theory
that you picked out

the biggest of the opposition,
dealt him a blow,

and everybody else
would fall into line.

A character like Billy Kimber,

what I find interesting is
the only way

that someone born
in Summer Lane in Birmingham,

which then was a very rough part
of Birmingham,

the only way that person
would ever rub shoulders

with a lord or a lady or an MP
was by doing what he did.

He would never have got there
by working hard in a factory.

And so, in a sense, this idea
that there's only one way out,

or two ways - boxing and that -
is sort of true.

And that's what I've tried to
reflect in Peaky Blinders.

Kimber's the clever one.

He realises that
the world is changing

and that there's big money
to be made out of gangsterism.

The youth gangs of the late
19th century, these are

much more territorial,
youthful fighting gangs.

Those gangs look very different
from gangs

like the racecourse gangs
of the 1920s.

The members of those gangs
are older men,

and, of course, they are much
more driven by money-making.

By the 20th century, society
is becoming much more organised,

and with organised society
comes organised crime.

And the criminals who inspired
Steven Knight.

All of the characters -
Darby Sabini, Alfie Solomons,

Billy Kimber - came as a consequence
of reading research

about who was around

and just discovering
the truth about them,

the illegal gambling
and the gangsters and all of that.

It's so wildly more
than you would expect it to be,

because, in the way that

the Americans have mythologised
their gangsters,

the British have never, ever
even gone there.

These people were not mythologised
at all,

and yet they were the same people.

And what of
the original Peaky Blinders?

Characters like Thomas Joyce
and Jeremiah Corkery were violent.

Many were victims of
the grinding poverty of the slums.

But there is no doubt
they had a profound effect

on the evolution and reputations
of Britain's industrial cities.

They highlighted the appalling
conditions so many endured

and forced society to act.

Perhaps their stories
are as relevant today

as they were
more than 100 years ago.

Next time,
British gangsterism explodes

in the racecourse wars of 1921.

It's England's first
major gangland war

between two gangs from
different cities.

They give rise to
Britain's Al Capone,

and spawn the mother and father
of all British crime gangs.

The Sabinis are
the spiritual godfathers

of the Krays and the Richardsons.

There they are.

The real Billy Kimber,
the real Darby Sabini

and the real Alfie Solomon
set to go to war.

MUSIC: Danger on the Dance Floor
by Dave Cavalier