- 19 hours ago
From Al Capone, to the real Peaky Blinders, from The Krays twins to the Queen of Harlem, each hour-long episode of Original Gangsters will see the legendary actor Sean Bean take a deep dive through a rogues gallery of some of the most notorious criminals in history to separate the fact from the fiction, as we find out what they mean to us today and just why they were the original gangsters.
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00:00One gang has become synonymous with Birmingham in the 1900s.
00:15But were they really the smartly dressed, ruthless family we've all seen on screen?
00:23Or was the truth much more dangerous?
00:30This is the story of the real Peaky Blinders.
01:00In 2013, an award-winning television series would burst onto our screens.
01:13But what was the real-life inspiration?
01:16Who were the real Peaky Blinders?
01:19And who was the real Tommy Shelby?
01:22Birmingham in the 1860s through to the 70s was in the process of rapid and spectacular change.
01:32Its population was exploding. It was approaching over 400,000 by 1871.
01:38We made anything that the world wanted.
01:41It was buttons, it was guns, it was jewellery, it was brassware, it was pens.
01:46Tell us what you wanted, we can make it.
01:47Birmingham at the turn of the century is really a city of two halves.
01:52On the one hand, it's doing really well in relation to the other major industrial cities of the Midlands and the North.
01:59However, that wealth comes at the expense of the people who labour for it, the working class.
02:05And their lives are extremely different.
02:06There was hundreds, thousands of people flooding to the area for work, for better prospects, to improve their lot for themselves and their families.
02:15There was lots of deprivation.
02:17People coming in for quite poorly paid manual labour jobs and really struggling to make ends meet.
02:23The living conditions for the poor were horrendous.
02:28Thousands of hard-working families crowded into back-to-back houses.
02:34Three, maybe four families to one house, sharing one communal toilet outside.
02:39They were entombed almost in this cycle of poverty.
02:46It was a battle every day against king poverty and that king was relentless and he was on caring.
02:54They are expected to labour for the prosperity of the British Empire until eventually they die.
03:01There are some aspects of human nature that don't seem to change from one age to the next.
03:07When people are given no opportunity, no outlet, no escape from their situation, you will only ever get one result.
03:16Violence.
03:18Fighting was almost a leisure activity for some men.
03:22They're living in poverty. They own nothing.
03:24They are looked down upon. They're disparaged.
03:27But the one thing that they've got is their fighting prowess.
03:31So in a poorer street, those men that were regarded as tough, gained status.
03:37It was something that they had.
03:42Under these circumstances, it's pretty clear that violence wasn't just a means of survival.
03:48It was a way of expressing the frustrations and discontent with their lives.
03:54They're called sluggers from 1872 because they slog.
03:58And they are the worst gangs for violence and the most notorious gangs in Birmingham from late 1860s really to the turn of the 20th century.
04:08When you think about crime at that time, if we just try and make sense of it with some compassion,
04:13some of that crime would have been in many ways perceived to be out of necessity.
04:16So if you don't have any food and you want to keep your family alive, you're going to steal food for them.
04:22So I think, again, compassion for where some of that early criminal behaviour comes from.
04:27It was a very violent time and you can see lots of records and evidence of different weapons that would be used.
04:37And they would use anything they could get their hands on.
04:39So generally, steel toe cap boots, belt buckles, any bits of brick or stones or anything they find on the floor.
04:45Lots of evidence of assaults where objects and missiles have just been thrown at the other person.
04:51Their main weapon is their belts.
04:54They wrap the belt round the wrist.
04:58They grab hold and make sure they've got it caught in the palm of the hand.
05:02And then they buckle it, leaving about eight inches.
05:05And then they slash and they slash.
05:07Cause terrible injuries.
05:08They are not organised criminals.
05:10These are all hooligans.
05:15If you've got to work six days a week from morning till night for pennies,
05:20and with no way out, violence is a language.
05:24Just the only way to be heard.
05:27But where do the Peaky Blinders fit into all this?
05:32Or were they?
05:34The term Peaky Blinder is a fashion statement.
05:37The Peaky Blinders are often called the bell-button crew.
05:40They wear bell-button trousers tight to the knee and then wide, 22 inches wide.
05:46And they have something like this scarf called a daff, a silkish type scarf.
05:52They're wearing a billycock.
05:54They have prison cropped hair, really almost bald.
05:57But they're like a quiff.
05:58They like to show it off.
05:59So they steam the billycock and they make the brim into like a funnel.
06:05And they pull it over one eye.
06:07Hence the brims blinding the eye.
06:09And when the flat cap comes in, all they do, they just pull the cap over the eye to blind it.
06:16So they've got a distinct fashion.
06:17And the first time that the term Peaky Blinder is used in the press in Birmingham is March 1890.
06:23The mythology surrounding the Peaky Blinders is that they kept razor blades in their caps and that they use these as lethal weapons when required.
06:32I don't believe any gangster ever had a razor blade in their cap because it would be mentioned in the newspapers.
06:38I found no authoritative evidence that there were ever razor blades in caps.
06:43An inoffensive chap called George Eastwood goes into the bar of the Rainbow Pub on the corner of High Street, Bordsley and Adley Street, not far from the boring.
06:57He's a teetotaler. Sadly, he's picked the wrong night.
07:01He's drinking a ginger beer.
07:07And three hard men with an evil reputation come in.
07:11And they insult him for drinking a soft drink.
07:15And a chap called Thomas Mucklow, the captain of the gang.
07:18Says, what are you drinking that tack for?
07:22He says, mind your own business. I can drink what I want.
07:25I can drink what I want.
07:44And a 14 year old lad was a witness.
07:47And he said, they shouted, give it to him hot lads.
07:51Oh, poor George. They did give it to him hot.
08:04So, after the attack on George Eastwood, the next day, there was an article in the newspaper reporting on it saying it was by the Peaky Blind again.
08:12During the 1880s, you get the rise of the sensationalist press, the kind of modern tabloid press.
08:23And the way in which the media reports on crime is completely different at this point.
08:28They have these sensational headlines that are extremely eye-catching.
08:32The media is a really important part of the creation of a new criminal stereotype at the end of the 19th century.
08:39So, looking through the original newspaper articles at the time, it would appear that there isn't one specific gang called the Peaky Blinders.
08:51Even judges start to refer to poor criminals as being of the Peaky class.
08:57Any criminal involved in theft, gambling, assaults, attacking police officers, they're all just called Peaky Blinders.
09:04And among the Peaky class criminals, some of the very worst were the Sheldon brothers.
09:13Stephen Knight, the creator of the television series, has said that the spark for the Shelbys was the Sheldons.
09:19The Sheldons had five brothers. Two of them were respectable. Three became three of the worst criminals and violent men in late Victorian and Edwardian Birmingham.
09:33John was the oldest. By 1881, when he was 15, he'd already got convictions. And throughout the 1880s and 90s, he's a professional thief. He's not a man to be messed with.
09:47He, on one occasion, with a friend, he's coming out of a pub, and they've taken a dislike to an Irish bloke, an old man, and they batter him in the street.
09:57He lives opposite with his daughter, the Irish bloke. His daughter comes over to try and stop them, pleading with them, please leave my father alone.
10:04Oh, no, they don't stop. Sheldon grabs hold of the poor young woman by the air, throws her to the ground, they drag her along the street, kicking her. That's the kind of man he was.
10:13The next oldest brother was Samuel. Only five foot one and a quarter. Despite his small size, he's a nasty, vicious man.
10:24And he's scarred with the results of his fights on his arms, on his legs, on his hands. He's another man that you don't mess with.
10:33Like his brother, he has no respect for women. He's one of a group of men that burst into the house of a 16-year-old young woman.
10:40They smash the door down, she flees upstairs, and then, in court it said, they all committed a most disgusting assault upon her.
10:49Joseph is the youngest brother.
10:52In 1899, he's named as a member of the feared Bar Street Gang, and it's pretty certain that his two older brothers were in that gang.
11:02He's also given as a Peaky Blinder.
11:05So it appears what we have is this rapid rise in street violence, with people like the Sheldons at the forefront.
11:13That perception being fuelled, of course, by what we could call early tabloid journalists, fanning the flames of middle-class panic.
11:20In 1899, the gang problem was so bad in Birmingham that the Chief Constable resigned, and the Birmingham Watch Committee, the counters that ran the police, fetched over from Ireland Charles Horton Rafter.
11:35Rafter realised, as soon as he'd come in, the Birmingham Police was badly on demand.
11:42So he worked on a rapid recruitment campaign.
11:47Rafter insisted, though, that his recruits had to be tall, they had to be fit.
11:51That meant that these young, fit officers could now go about in pairs in the toughest districts, where the reign of the ruffian was imposed by the Peaky Blinders.
12:04Before, many of these areas only had one policeman on a beat.
12:08Now there's two. They're big, strong lads.
12:09And the story that was passed on for generations in the Birmingham Police was that Rafter asked three things of his recruits.
12:18Can you read? Can you write? Can you fight?
12:22Because they'd have to.
12:23In 1914, the outbreak of the First World War drained Britain of a great many of its fighting age men.
12:42Perhaps unsurprisingly, the crimes that had been associated with the Peaky class dropped.
12:46But we know that history never gives us any short answers.
12:51So what else contributed to this decrease in gang activity?
12:57There's organic factors that are working together.
13:02There's a High Church of England vicar called Father Pinchard, who starts a rudimentary boxing club.
13:07So they're learning respect, discipline.
13:10Football is becoming a really popular participation sport,
13:15as well as a spectator sport.
13:17And instead of gathering on waste ground to play pitch and toss, they're playing football now.
13:24And just as the gangs are disappearing, the cinema comes in.
13:28And instead of joining a street gang, lads are going to the pictures two or three nights a week.
13:36But of course, all the social programmes in the world wouldn't be able to erase criminality completely.
13:43There were some who were all ready to be embedded in a life of crime to ever step away.
13:51And there's one name that keeps coming up again and again in history books, police records and arrest warrants.
14:02Not just in Birmingham, but up and down the country.
14:04William Kimber, born 7th of February 1882.
14:11Born and raised in the tough Summer Lane area, notorious for his peaky blinders.
14:17It wouldn't be long before Kimber would have his first run in with the law.
14:20His mum was an Irish Brommie. His dad was English.
14:24There is no suggestion that either of them were ever involved in any crime.
14:28But Kimber, at the age of 12, is birched for a petty theft.
14:32Now, that means that he's forced to lie down and they pull down his trousers.
14:38Then they take a bunch of robust birch treaks, wired at one end and whip him.
14:47Again, I'm not excusing Billy Kimber's later criminality.
14:51But at an early age, the state is using violence against him.
14:54It would be remiss to think that it hasn't had an impact, something that significant in terms of being punished in that way, possibly being shamed.
15:07Shame is something that we don't talk about when we look at these acts, we just look at the act itself.
15:11And we don't think about how vulnerable you are when you're in that position and the shame that comes with that.
15:16And I think these are all things that he used as fuel to get out and do anything he could to get out of that situation and never experience that again.
15:33He obviously learned to fight early on.
15:36The only Brommie I ever met who knew him said,
15:39Carl, he was strong as an ox and he fought like a lion.
15:45Then, with that reputation as the top man, the top fighter, he can control things.
15:52When you really get down to it on the streets, right here, right now, where it matters, violence is everything.
15:58But the threat of violence, just in a moment, is even more powerful.
16:04That's why people are very happy to let their deeds to be known.
16:07No matter how gruesome, because this sends a message.
16:11It's like psychological warfare.
16:13He came from a place where fear lived all the time.
16:18I imagine he lived in a state of fear.
16:22Am I going to get my next meal? Am I going to be beaten up?
16:25Are we going to be attacked as a family?
16:27So fear fuelled this.
16:29He felt fear as a young person.
16:32And then he wanted to become the instigator of fear, because that's how you stayed safe.
16:38His favourite punch was to the solar plexus.
16:40Once you hit somebody really hard in the stomach, it makes them soil themselves.
16:46Now, can you imagine that?
16:48Not only are you being beaten up, not only are you bent over in pain, but you have been humiliated.
16:53He was very brutal, but the difference, you know, with him was he just had a polish that showed so much more street smarts.
17:01Billy Kimber was a fighting man, a feared fighting man, who, through his physicality, his fierceness, his viciousness, became the leader of a group of the most feared criminals in England at the time, the Birmingham gang.
17:24According to police reports, by 1918, Kimber has become the leader of several small gangs.
17:34But street fighting was no longer the name of the game. Kimber was after money, real money.
17:39And where was he going to find that?
17:49Racing booms in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.
17:53Lots of men are coming home with payments from the army neighbour. A lot want to drink and gamble, enjoy themselves. There's masses of people going to racecourses.
18:04So all the money populated there. And of course, all the people who wanted money populated there behind them.
18:09And by the early 20th century, he's got a gang with his brothers Joe and Harry and other hard men who are going to the racecourses of the Midlands and the north of England.
18:23They're known as the Bromager boys. They pickpocket. And if you know you've been pickpocketed and tried to stop them, what's going to happen to you?
18:29They're going to doff you up badly. Because there's hardly any racecourses of security and the few policemen there are scared.
18:38These gangs also blackmail bookmakers. You want to stand on that pitch, that's a good pitch, you've got to give a survivor.
18:46You've got a stall you're standing on. Two and sixpence, that's 12 and a half pence a race.
18:51Six races, that's 15 shillings, 75 pence. That's as much as a poor man could earn in a week.
18:55You've got a blackboard, you write on the blackboard the names of the horses.
19:00What do you need for that? A stick of chalk. Two and a tanner, two and sixpence a race.
19:05At Epsom. Doncaster. The big meetings. There could be hundreds of bookmakers. This is big income.
19:13Billy Kimber and his gang made at least £400 a day, which translates to £22,000 a day.
19:21About £8 million a year in today's money.
19:25Now, Billy Kimber and the Birmingham gang were running the racecourse rackets in the Midlands and the North.
19:32No challenges in the Midlands and the North.
19:34Up towards Newcastle they've got their own gang and they don't bother with Scotland because the Glaswegian gangs run the racecourses up there.
19:39So it's no longer just fighting each other over territory, but actually the organisation of criminal rackets around betting, gambling, liquor licences.
19:49So they're a really distinctive new period of organised crime in the city.
19:55So, in a short space of time, Kimber's influence had become widespread.
20:02His gang, known as the Birmingham gang, had terrorising racecourses up and down the country with no regards for the consequences.
20:10Could this man be the real Tommy Shelby?
20:17By the beginning of the 1920s, almost all of Britain's racecourses are under the control of one man.
20:31Billy Kimber.
20:34The Birmingham gang and their London allies are extorting money from the bookmakers, but they're racist.
20:42They're anti-Semitic.
20:44He would target Jewish bookmakers in the East End.
20:47One of whom is a man called Alfie Solomon.
20:49Now, compared to Kimber and most other members of the gangs who deserted in the First World War, Solomon served with honour.
21:01He received three service medals.
21:03And he comes out and he becomes a bookmaker.
21:06He's a secular Jewish man.
21:08His dad's got a green grocery business in Covent Garden.
21:11They had a servant growing up for his bookmaking.
21:14One event will change the course of Alfie Solomon's life like no other.
21:21And a really vile man called Tommy Armstrong, slugger, member of the Birmingham gang, comes past.
21:30And he's offering 11 to 4 on a horse.
21:34And Armstrong says, I'll have 12 quid on that, on the nod.
21:39That meant he wanted it on credit.
21:40If it loses, is he going to pay up? Of course he's not.
21:45But if it wins, does he want paying? Of course he does.
21:49Solomon says, no, I ain't taking the bet. I'm not having that.
21:52Anyway, he kicked off.
21:59The horse won.
22:01Armstrong's mucky drunk by now.
22:04He comes back, demands his money.
22:06Solomon refuses.
22:09Armstrong took his field glasses, his heavy viewing glasses.
22:14Smashed them into the face of Alfie Solomon.
22:19He collapsed on the floor in a bloody mess.
22:22And then Armstrong slammed him in his face with his boots.
22:27Solomon's left there, prone.
22:35His face a bloody mass and with several teeth missing.
22:40This attack on Alfie Solomon transforms him.
22:43I've got no evidence at all before the attack that he was a vicious criminal.
22:47But afterwards, he certainly becomes one.
22:52Alfie Solomon seems to suddenly become violent out of absolutely nowhere.
22:56That shows to me underlying rage and it needed to be unlocked.
23:00Someone doesn't just become violent one day out of absolutely nowhere for no reason.
23:06I mean, he had a reason, he was beaten up, but that's not a reason to start a criminal career.
23:12So I think that unlocked a rage in him that he had for a very, very long time.
23:17Alfie Solomon was just another link in the chain.
23:21There are different groups.
23:23So you have the money earners and you have the people who need to enforce that, the enforcers.
23:27They'll go out and they'll do the street work and they'll break arms and they'll kill people
23:30and they'll dominate people and they'll collect the money.
23:34But really that's all they're good for.
23:35But the bosses, the real organised crime figures that do very well at this and rise up, they can do both.
23:47Billy Kimber had gone from a backstreet thug, a petty criminal,
23:52to one of the first organised crime bosses in England.
23:55I think some of the crimes that we see Billy Kimber engage in are narcissistically driven.
24:02I think he became a little bit addictive to what he was getting and it felt really, really good and he felt he deserved more because of that.
24:09And I think that drove him to then want to go to London and kind of pursue crime there as well.
24:15Kimber and his boys had been raking in money, working the country's racecourses like their own personal gold mine.
24:22But one thing we know about organised crime is that when money's flowing, you better watch your bike.
24:29March 1921 and London bookmaker Alfie Solomon has just been severely beaten by Billy Kimber's Lieutenant Tommy Armstrong.
24:41Alfie Solomon then turned to the Governor of the Jewish East End Underworld, Edward Emanuel.
24:47Edward Emanuel.
24:50He was King of the Underworld with the Jewish people of the time in the East End.
24:53He was really cunning, he knew how to put things together.
24:56Like Kimber, he's a fearsome fighter, a thug, a man who people are scared of.
25:03On one occasion he has a fight, he gets shot.
25:07Even though he's shot, he chases the bloke down the street and batters him.
25:10But he's also, like Kimber, got something up here. He's got a brain.
25:17Edward Emanuel is a very clever figure. He's very, very good at what he does.
25:22Because he's one of the people who understands to keep in the background is where the real power is.
25:27And he was very good at moving guys around, which is another real trait of an organised crime boss.
25:33In my opinion, Edward Emanuel is England's first godfather.
25:39He wants to get rid of Kimber and his London allies from down south.
25:44But he's got a team of Anglo-Jewish tearaways, but on their own they're not strong enough.
25:50Things move very rapidly after Solomon turns to Edward Emanuel for help.
25:56Emanuel turns to an up-and-coming young gangster.
25:58His mum is English. His dad was Italian but came to England as a youngster from Palmer in northern Italy.
26:08The Sabini gang were quite interesting. They were vicious thugs.
26:12There was about 300 members of the Sabini gang at its prime.
26:16Where they settled was in Clerkenwell in Little Italy, of course.
26:21Just the other side of the east end of London.
26:24He started off as a bouncer, really. That was his first kind of innings into that world.
26:31He was a very rough-and-tumble, very, you know, in-your-face street brawler.
26:37And they're called in to back up Alfie Solomon and Emanuel's Anglo-Jewish tearaways
26:43against Billy Kimber's Birmingham gang and their London mates.
26:47And so began the biggest gang war this country had ever known.
26:59So, the Birmingham gang and their London allies realise Sabini's been called in.
27:03They corner him at Greenford Trotting Track.
27:07They're shouting, we're going to murder him.
27:08They've got wood, planks of wood, they're hitting him.
27:11Somebody says, get a gun, shoot him.
27:13Luckily, he's saved by the police.
27:16It turns out that the gun wasn't registered.
27:20He should have really been prosecuted for it, but he got away with it.
27:22Throughout the spring and summer of 1921, there are shootings, beatings at racecourses and in London
27:32and around railway stations in the capital.
27:35It really was dangerous.
27:37Things are getting out of hand. This isn't good for business.
27:40The newspapers are picking up on this.
27:42Racecourse ruffians, ruffs of the turf, all these kind of phrases are being used.
27:47There's too much attention from the police.
27:48It's interesting, isn't it? The press attention only really gets going once there's a spectacle.
27:54When ordinary bookmakers were getting extorted, no one really paid attention.
28:01So, someone calls a meeting.
28:07It's going to be at Collier Street, the house in Kings Cross where Sabini is now living.
28:11They decide that they'll have to make peace for the sake of their businesses.
28:23Billy Kimber turns up with some of the McDonalds.
28:26They're having a good drink and he's going to leave.
28:34Who turns up?
28:36But Alfie Solomon.
28:38Now, they're racist. They hate Jewish men and women.
28:41And Kimber goes for him.
28:43Pulls a revolver.
28:45And he calls him racist names.
28:48There's a scuffle.
28:50And in the scuffle, as Alfie Solomon's trying to stop Kimber from shooting him, the gun goes off.
28:57And the bullet actually goes into Kimber's back.
29:00Everybody disperses.
29:02Kimber's found unconscious on the street outside.
29:04He's sent to hospital.
29:07Allies of Kimber told me that, that night, members of the London gang supporting Kimber and the Birmingham gang surrounded the hospital.
29:18It tells you the power that Kimber had.
29:23They go to court.
29:25Solomon admits that he accidentally shot Kimber.
29:29Billy Kimber is a witness who refuses to testify.
29:31And all he says is this.
29:34If he says he shot me, well, that's up to him.
29:37But only cowards use revolvers.
29:39And I would rather blow my brains out than use a shooter.
29:43The case is dismissed.
29:46But the worst was yet to come.
29:57What do we actually know about Billy Kimber?
30:01We know that Billy Kimber and the Birmingham gang are determined to maintain their dominance down south.
30:12But Edward Emmanuel and Derby Sabine have other ideas.
30:15Epsom.
30:18Probably the biggest meeting of the year.
30:20The Birmingham gang decide they're going to really show who's in charge.
30:26The Epsom Derby, one of the biggest racing events of the year, was attended by over 200,000 people.
30:33But get this, they had no security.
30:36This is a gift for Billy Kimber.
30:37Birmingham gang members are going down there terrorising bookmakers.
30:42After racing, some Leeds bookmakers are leaving when they get attacked by 20-odd.
30:49Really vicious, horrible men from Birmingham.
30:55They had been paying protection to Kimber before, but it looks like they're moving towards Sabine and to Solomon.
31:01The Birmingham gang really inflict terrible injuries on them.
31:08And then they decide to go for a drink in a pub.
31:10Which is where they're eventually arrested.
31:14Out of the 20-odd, 17 men are sent down.
31:18These 17 men belong to different little crews within the Birmingham gang.
31:23That weakens Kimber.
31:25He's lost 17 of his most feared fighters.
31:29He then decides he's going to make a massive show of strength at Bath in the summer.
31:35The railway station at Bath suddenly is surrounded by a horde of Birmingham hard men.
31:46Many of them not part of the Birmingham gang, but are attracted to Bath by the opportunity of having a pot.
31:54Having a go at the Londoners and particularly the Jewish Londoners.
31:58Kimber's there.
32:00His main fighters who are not in prison now are there.
32:02They start beating up Jewish bookmakers.
32:06And Kimber and another horrible Birmingham gang member batter Alfie Solomon, who goes down.
32:15They also attack his clerk, an inoffensive bloke called Charles Bild.
32:20They hit him with everything.
32:22And then somebody smashes him with a sandbag.
32:26The poor bloke goes down and eventually when the police come to save him, he's unconscious, covered in blood.
32:31Billy Kimber gets charged for that assault.
32:35But in September 1921, when he goes to court, no one shows up to give evidence against him.
32:42So the case is dismissed.
32:44But before they leave, Kimber's lawyer announces to the court,
32:47don't worry, there'll be no more of this trouble, because this has all been sorted out.
32:54Cleverly, Edward Emanuel starts the Bookmakers Protection Association.
32:59To stop the ruffianism on the turf.
33:03To stop the blackmailing of bookmakers.
33:06Well, what then happens is the jockey club like this, they're really upset by all the bad newspaper reports.
33:13People are going to stop coming racing if they don't watch it.
33:15So they back this new organisation, which appears to be legitimate.
33:19The police then are quite happy because they can say, yes, this is a legitimate organisation.
33:24But what does he do?
33:26He employs Darby Sabini and his men as stewards to enforce order.
33:31But this was a very clever strategic move to protect the Jewish bookmakers that were constantly being threatened and attacked and preyed upon by, of course, Billy Kimber.
33:42This also legitimised Darby Sabini and everything that they needed to do next, including protecting all their organisation.
33:51Essentially, the Sabinis are untouchable because the jockey club in control of flat racing and the police like the idea of an official organisation which they can support.
34:04Emanuel has won.
34:07The Birmingham boys have been outwitted.
34:10They can't operate down south anymore.
34:13So, the boys insist that no southern bookmakers can operate in the Midlands or the north ever again.
34:21It says here,
34:23a meeting is finally called at Beresford's house to discuss terms of a truce.
34:32By September, newspapers are reporting that the gangs have divided England between them,
34:39that the Sabinis would have the south of England
34:42and that the Birmingham gang would have the Midlands and the north.
34:45This means that till the mid-1920s, the Sabinis rule supreme on southern England's racecourses and those in London.
34:55But that was the time for Billy Kimber to walk away.
34:57What's fascinating about Billy Kimber and the Birmingham gang is that as soon as he steps away, the whole organisation disintegrates.
35:11They're all fighting each other again, just like the slogging gangs.
35:14Without him at the centre, it all just falls apart.
35:20Now, Emanuel, he's moving slowly away from gangsterism into legitimacy.
35:26And he sees an opportunity to start up a legitimate printing company, which will print all the printing needs of the racecourse bookmakers, their tickets.
35:39Instead of the chalk, runners, racing lists.
35:41He's clever enough to step back, pull the strings of the Sabinis, make money, but start up a legitimate printing company, the Portsea Printing Press.
35:52Now, down south, the Jockey Club have decided they've got to take action.
35:56They bring in a new force of security men and the Sabinis are gradually pushed out.
36:01But what they do, they regroup in Soho.
36:07They take over the protection rackets of the illegal drinking clubs and the Spielers.
36:12They also extorted protection money from restaurant owners, publicans, not only in Soho, but in their heartlands of King's Cross and Clerkenwell.
36:24Albert Dines and Bert Marsh, leading towards Jack Spot and Billy Hill.
36:36He dies a broken man in 1950.
36:39Alfie Solomon was targeted by other gangs into the mid-1930s and unable to get police protection.
36:46He then disappeared.
36:47Kimber, so it's said, about 1926, shoots through the windows of the Griffin, one of the Sabinis hangouts, and flees to America, where it's said he kills a man, and then he goes off to Chicago.
37:03Well, who's running Chicago in 1926?
37:06Al Capone.
37:08Billy Kimber had a real depth of a person.
37:10You know, and you see this all the way through his journey, from the street smarts, to the brutality, to the real CEO managerial decisions that he made, even back then, which of course positioned him as one of the leading lights of organised crime in the UK.
37:26Kimber comes back.
37:27By now, he's married to Elizabeth Garnham, the sister of one of his pals from Chapel Market.
37:36And he was then clever enough to realise, when he was beaten, that he needed to go legitimate.
37:42I think he was pushed into that as well by his wife, who, like Sabine's wife, wanted middle-class respectability for their children.
37:49Kimber would eventually settle in Devon, in Torquay, in a house overlooking the bay.
37:58He, too, would reinvent himself as a legitimate race course bookmaker.
38:03An advert he took out of the local paper would read,
38:06Bet with Bill Kimber, a man who's reliable.
38:08And there's a real irony here, because he becomes a leading member of the local Devon Footmakers Protection Association.
38:22The very organisation that, in effect, brought him down.
38:26Started by Kimber's nemesis, Edward Emanuel, as a means for him to take over down south.
38:31But the BPA, by the 30s, has become a legitimate and respectable organisation.
38:38We know that, eventually, Billy did retire, but prior to that, psychologically, he was on guard his whole life.
38:45Um, right from living in the slums in Birmingham and throughout his entire, kind of, criminal career.
38:50I think what that does to a person is it sets them in this constant sense of fight or flight,
38:56which means that your adrenal system is activated, which means that you can never really rest.
39:01And I think that that is only sustainable for so long in terms of a person's lifespan.
39:08I don't think it's something that you can do forever.
39:14Kimber eventually dies in 1945 in a nursing home.
39:19And he died one of the last of the real Peaky Blinders.
39:24If we look at how Darby Sabini, Alfie Solomon, Billy Kimber are portrayed in the series,
39:31there is a fundamental difference.
39:34Darby Sabini is depicted as a bella figura, like a Sicilian Mafia don, elegantly dressed with a walking cane.
39:43He wasn't. He didn't wear fancy clothes. He wasn't elegant. He wasn't a bella figura.
39:48He wore a flat calf, a collarless shirt, working man's clothes.
39:54He didn't speak Italian. He regarded himself as an Englishman.
39:58Alfie Solomon is portrayed as an Orthodox Jewish man.
40:02He wasn't. He was from a secular Jewish background whose family had been settled in England for generations.
40:08Billy Kimber is given as a Londoner, a small Londoner. He wasn't. He was a Brummie.
40:12I think people like the romanticism, the glamour of it all, and this suggestion of a different society in Birmingham that people might not have otherwise been aware of.
40:27I think people will always be drawn to gangsters because, in many ways, they feel like the stuff of myth.
40:36Partly because these men that we see, and it's usually men, sometimes women, but usually men, are very good at creating stories.
40:48They're very good at creating legacy. And human beings, we like stories. They create a mystery. And I think we're drawn to understanding that.
41:00What lessons should we take from the real Peaky Blinders and the gangs of the 1920s?
41:07Most importantly, gang members and organised gangsters are not meant to be admired.
41:14These were not glamorous anti-heroes who people would look to for support.
41:18They weren't Robin Hood characters that looked after the poor. They preyed upon the poor.
41:23They were feared members of the working class. They didn't look after the poor, the Peaky Blinders. They beat them up. They bullied them.
41:30Sabini, Kimber, Emmanuel took money from poorer people whenever they could.
41:37I suppose it's not really surprising that a fictional portrayal of a criminal organisation doesn't match with the reality.
41:44After all, it's the job of historical fiction to impart glamour to the everyday, to make it exciting.
41:51But what's fascinating isn't so much that a brilliant television series found a devoted audience.
41:59It's how little attitudes have changed.
42:02We're still convinced that criminality is largely a working class phenomenon.
42:08And street gangs, they're not a thing of the past. They exist today in every city in the world.
42:13But why?
42:16Perhaps there is something innate in people that makes them want to seek out fellowship.
42:21Community.
42:23And when none exists, construct their own.
42:26But I suppose that's why we need the legends.
42:29For when reality is not to our taste.
42:32Legends don't often leave room for ordinary folk.
42:35Each fucking is musi folk.
42:38X 36
42:42Features
42:49Located to Northernekin
42:52підsting
42:54Mundn
42:57September, snow videos, cold September, the distances we cover, the fistfights on the beach.
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