The Real Peaky Blinders: An Illustrated Talk with Professor Carl Chinn MBE

Name: The Real Peaky Blinders: An Illustrated Talk with Professor Carl Chinn MBE
Start: 2025-03-07T11:00:00+00:00
Location: Littleton Street West, WS2 8EW Walsall, United Kingdom

Schedule

Fri, 07 Mar, 2025 at 11:00 am

UTC+00:00

Location

Littleton Street West, WS2 8EW Walsall, United Kingdom | Walsall, EN

Stylish and dark, the BBC series the ‘Peaky Blinders’ recounts the exploits of the charismatic Thomas Shelby and his violent Birmingham criminal gang in the aftermath of the First World War. Named after the real peaky blinder gangs that blighted the lives of the respectable poor and police in the 1890s and early twentieth century, the dramatised gangsters are well-dressed, captivating, and powerful. By contrast, the real peaky blinders were petty criminals and back-street bullies whose reign of ruffianism was ended before 1914 thanks largely to strong policing directed by Charles Haughton Rafter, a Protestant Irishman. Appointed chief constable in 1899, his recruits took the fight to the peaky blinders and had to fulfil three criteria: Can they read, Can they write, Can they fight.
However, a former peaky blinder, Billy Kimber, went on to lead a vicious throng of rogues known as the Birmingham Gang, which plagued the racegoers of the Midlands and North of England, pickpocketing and blackmailing bookmakers for protection money. By 1921, they had also taken control of the highly profitable rackets on the racecourses of Southern England. Kimber’s rich pickings aroused covetous eyes, leading to Britain’s first major gangland war with London’s Sabini Gang headed by the Anglo-Italian Darby Sabini and including the Anglo-Jewish Alfie Solomon. The lives of these gangsters were as bloody and compelling as their fictionalised counterparts.
This, then, is the story of the Real Peaky Blinders, an illustrated talk with Professor Carl Chinn MBE. A great grandson of a real peaky blinder, he interviewed the younger brother of Alfie Solomon in 1987, along with others connected to the real gangs, and is the author of the Sunday Times number one bestseller, 'Peaky Blinders. The Real Story' (2019) and was the historical consultant for the BBC documentaries, ‘The Real Peaky Blinders’.
Tickets are £5 and include tea/coffee. Call the Museum on 01922 652288 or pop in to book your ticket.