Original Gangsters with Sean Bean 1x1

1. One gang has become synonymous with Birmingham

2. in the 1900s.

3. But were they really the smartly dressed, ruthless family

4. we've all seen on screen?

5. Or was the truth much more dangerous?

6. This is the story of the real Peaky Blinders.

7. In 2013,

8. an award-winning television series would burst onto our screens.

9. But what was the real-life inspiration?

10. Who were the real Peaky Blinders? And who was the real Tommy Shelby?

11. Birmingham in the 1860s through to the '70s

12. was in the process of rapid and spectacular change.

13. Its population was exploding:

14. it was approaching over 400,000 by 1871.

15. We made anything that the world wanted.

16. It was buttons, it was guns, it was jewellery, it was brassware,

17. it was pens. Tell us what you wanted, we could make it.

18. Birmingham at the turn of the century

19. is really a city of two halves.

20. On the one hand, it's doing really well

21. in relation to other industrial cities of the Midlands

22. and the North. However,

23. that wealth comes at the expense of the people

24. who labour for it, the working class.

25. Their lives are very different.

26. There was hundreds, thousands of people flooding to the area

27. for work, to improve their lot for themselves and their families.

28. There was lots of deprivation, people coming in

29. for quite poorly paid manual labour jobs

30. and struggling to make ends meet.

31. The living conditions for the poor were horrendous.

32. Thousands of hard-working families crowded into back-to-back houses,

33. three, maybe four families to one house,

34. sharing one communal toilet outside.

35. They were entombed almost in this cycle of poverty.

36. It was a battle every day against King Poverty,

37. and that king was relentless and he was uncaring.

38. They are expected to labour

39. for the prosperity of the British Empire

40. until eventually they die.

41. Some aspects of human nature don't seem to change

42. from one age to the next.

43. When people are given no opportunity, no outlet,

44. no escape from the situation, you will only ever get one result:

45. violence.

46. Fighting was almost a leisure activity for some men.

47. They're living in poverty, they own nothing.

48. They are looked down upon, disparaged.

49. But the one thing that they've got is their fighting prowess.

50. So in a poorer street,

51. those men that were regarded as tough gained status.

52. It was something that they had.

53. Under these circumstances it's pretty clear

54. that violence wasn't just a means of survival,

55. it was a way of expressing the frustrations

56. and discontent with their lives.

57. They're called 'sloggers' from 1872 because they slog.

58. And they are the worst gangs for violence

59. and the most notorious gangs in Birmingham from late 1860s

60. to the turn of the 20th century.

61. When you think about crime at that time,

62. if we try to make sense of it with compassion, some of that crime

63. would have in many ways seen to be out of necessity.

64. So if you don't have any food and want to keep your family alive,

65. you'll steal food for them. I think again,

66. compassion for where some of that early criminal behaviour comes from.

67. It was a very violent time,

68. and you can see lots of records

69. and evidence of different weapons that would be used.

70. They'd use anything they could get their hands on:

71. steel toe-cap boots, belt buckles, any bits of brick or stones

72. or anything they find on the floor, lots of evidence of assaults

73. where objects and missiles have been thrown at another person.

74. Their main weapon is their belts.

75. They wrap the belt round the wrist,

76. they grab hold and make sure they've got it caught

77. in the palm of the hand. And then they buckle it,

78. leaving about eight inches, and then they slash,

79. cause terrible injuries.

80. They are not organised criminals, these are all hooligans.

81. If you've got to work six days a week

82. from morning till night for pennies,

83. and with no way out, violence is a language.

84. It's just the only way to be heard.

85. But where do the Peaky Blinders fit into all this?

86. Who were they?

87. The term 'peaky blinder' is a fashion statement.

88. The Peaky Blinders are often called 'The Bell-Bottom Crew.'

89. They wear bell-bottom trousers tight to the knee

90. and then wide, 22 inches wide.

91. And they have something like this scarf, called a daff,

92. a silkish-type scarf.

93. They're wearing a billycock.

94. They have prison-cropped hair, almost bald,

95. but they like a quiff. They like to show it off.

96. So they steam the billycock and they make the brim

97. into like a funnel, and they pull it over one eye.

98. Hence the brims blinding the eye.

99. And when the flat cap comes in,

100. all they do, they just pull the cap over the eye to blind it.

101. So they've got a distinct fashion,

102. and the first time that the term 'peaky blinder' is used

103. in the press in Birmingham is March 1890.

104. The mythology surrounding the Peaky Blinders

105. is that they kept razors in their caps,

106. and they used these as lethal weapons when required.

107. I don't believe that any gangster ever had a razor blade

108. in their cap, because it would be mentioned in the newspapers.

109. I found no authoritative evidence

110. that there were razor blades in caps.

111. An inoffensive chap called George Eastwood

112. goes into the bar of the Rainbow pub

113. on the corner of High Street, Bordsley and Adley Street,

114. not far from the Bull Ring.

115. He's a teetotaller. Sadly, he's picked the wrong night.

116. He's drinking a ginger beer.

117. And three hard men with an evil reputation come in,

118. and they insult him for drinking a soft drink.

119. And a chap called Thomas Mucklow, the captain of the gang...

120. says “What you drinking that tak for?" He says,

121. “Mind your own business, I can drink what I want."

122. And a 14-year-old lad was a witness,

123. and he said they shouted, “Give it to him hot, lads."

124. Oh, poor George, they did give it to him hot.

125. After the attack on George Eastwood,

126. the next day there was an articl e in the newspaper reported on it,

127. saying it was by the Peaky Blinder gang.

128. During the 1880s you get the rise of the sensationalist press,

129. the kind of modern tabloid press,

130. and the way in which the media reports on crime

131. is completely different at this point:

132. they have sensational headlines that are extremely eye-catching.

133. The media is a really important part of

134. the creation of a new criminal stereotype

135. at the end of the 19th century.

136. So looking through the original newspaper articles,

137. it would appear that there isn't one specific gang

138. called the Peaky Blinders.

139. Even judges start to refer to poor criminals

140. as being of 'the Peaky class.'

141. Any criminal involved in theft, gambling, assaults,

142. attacking police officers, they're all called Peaky Blinders.

143. And among the Peaky class criminals,

144. some of the very worst were the Sheldon brothers.

145. Stephen Knight, the creator of the television series,

146. has said that the spark for the Shelbys was the Sheldons.

147. The Sheldons had five brothers. Two of them were respectable.

148. Three became three of the worst criminals

149. and violent men in late Victorian and Edwardian Birmingham.

150. John was the oldest.

151. By 1881, when he was 15,

152. he'd already got convictions and throughout the 1880s and '90s,

153. he's a professional thief. He's not a man to be messed with.

154. He, on one occasion with a friend, is coming out of a pub

155. and they'd taken a dislike to an Irish bloke, an old man,

156. and they batter him in the street.

157. He lives opposite with his daughter, the Irish bloke.

158. His daughter comes over to try and stop them, pleading with them,

159. "Please leave my father alone." Oh no, they don't stop.

160. Sheldon grabs hold of the poor young woman by the hair,

161. throws her to the ground, they drag her along, kicking her.

162. That's the kind of man he was.

163. The next oldest brother was Samuel.

164. Only five foot one and a quarter.

165. Despite his small size, he's a nasty, vicious man,

166. and he's scarred with the results of his fights, on his arms,

167. on his legs, on his hands. Another man you don't mess with.

168. Like his brother, he has no respect for women.

169. He's one of a group of men

170. that burst into the house of a 16-year-old young woman.

171. They smash the door down, she flees upstairs,

172. and then in court it said

173. they all committed a 'most disgusting assault' on her.

174. Joseph is the youngest brother. In 1899,

175. he's named as a member of the feared Bar Street gang,

176. and it's pretty certain that his two older brothers were in that gang.

177. He's also given as a Peaky Blinder.

178. So it appears what we have

179. is this rapid rise in street violence,

180. with people like the Sheldons to the fore, a perception fuelled,

181. of course, by what we could call early tabloid journalists

182. fanning the flames of middle class panic.

183. In 1899, the gang problem was so bad in Birmingham

184. that the Chief Constable resigned and the Birmingham Watch Committee,

185. the counters that ran the police,

186. fetched over from Ireland Charles Horton Rafter.

187. Rafter realised, as soon as he come in,

188. the Birmingham police was badly undermanned,

189. so he worked on a rapid recruitment campaign.

190. Rafter insisted, though, that his recruits had to be tall,

191. they had to be fit.

192. That meant that these young fit officers

193. could now go about in pairs in the toughest districts,

194. where the reign of the ruffian was imposed by the Peaky Blinders.

195. Before, many of these areas only had one policeman on a beat.

196. Now there's two. They're big, strong lads.

197. And the story that was passed on for generations

198. in the Birmingham police

199. was that Rafter asked three things of his recruits:

200. can you read? Can you write? Can you fight?

201. Because they'd have to.

202. In 1914,

203. the outbreak of the First World War drained Britain

204. of a great many of its fighting age men.

205. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the crimes

206. that had been associated with the Peaky class dropped.

207. But we know that history never gives us any short answers.

208. So what else contributed to this decreasing gang activity?

209. There's organic factors that are working together.

210. There's a High Church of England vicar called Father Pinshard

211. who starts a rudimentary boxing club.

212. They're learning respect, discipline. Football is becoming

213. a really popular participation sport as well as a spectator sport.

214. And instead of gathering on waste ground

215. to play pitch and toss, they're playing football now.

216. And just as the gangs are disappearing,

217. the cinema comes in. Instead of joining a street gang,

218. lads are going to the pictures two or three nights a week.

219. But of course,

220. all the social programmes in the world

221. wouldn't be able to erase criminality completely.

222. There were some who were already too embedded in a life of crime

223. to ever step away.

224. And there's one name that keeps coming up again and again

225. in history books, police records and arrest warrants,

226. not just in Birmingham, but up and down the country.

227. William Kimber, born 7th February, 1882.

228. Born and raised in the tough Summer Lane area,

229. notorious for its Peaky Blinders,

230. it wouldn't be long before Kimber would have his first run-in

231. with the law. - His mum was an Irish Brummie.

232. his dad was English. There is no suggestion that either of them

233. were ever involved in any crime. But Kimber at the age of 12,

234. he's birched for a petty theft. Now, that means

235. that he is forced to lie down, and they pull down his trousers.

236. Then they take a bunch of robust birch twigs,

237. wired at one end, and whip him.

238. Again, I'm not excusing Billy Kimber's later criminality,

239. but at an early age the state is using violence against him.

240. It would be remiss to think that it hadn't had an impact,

241. something that significant in terms of being punished

242. in that way, possibly being shamed.

243. Shame is something that we don't talk about

244. when we look at these acts. We just look at the act itself,

245. not about how vulnerable you are when you're in that position,

246. and the shame that comes with that. And I think

247. these are all things that he used as fuel to get out,

248. and do anything he could to never experience that situation again.

249. He obviously learnt to fight early on.

250. The only Brummie I ever met who knew him said,

251. “Carl, he was strong as an ox, and he fought like a lion."

252. Then, with that reputation as the top man, the top fighter,

253. he can control things.

254. When you really get down to it, on the streets, right here right now

255. where it matters, violence is everything.

256. But the threat of violence just in a moment

257. is even more powerful.

258. That's why people are very happy to let their deeds to be known,

259. no matter how gruesome, because this sends a message.

260. It's like psychological warfare. - He came from a place

261. where fear lived all the time.

262. I imagine he lived in a state of fear.

263. "Am I gonna get my next meal? Am I going to be beaten up?

264. Are we going to be attacked as a family?" So fear fuelled this.

265. He felt fear as a young person,

266. and then he wanted to become the instigator of fear,

267. because that's how you'd stay safe.

268. His favourite punch was to the solar plexus.

269. Once you hit somebody really hard in the stomach,

270. it makes them soil themselves. Now, can you imagine that?

271. Not only have you been beaten up, not only you're bent over in pain,

272. but you have been humiliated.

273. He was very brutal, but the difference, you know,

274. with him was he just had a polish

275. that showed so much more street smarts.

276. Billy Kimber was a fighting man, a feared fighting man,

277. who through his physicality,

278. his fierceness, his viciousness,

279. became the leader of a group of the most feared criminals

280. in England at the time, the Birmingham Gang.

281. According to police reports, by 1918

282. Kimber has become the leader of several small gangs.

283. But street fighting was no longer the name of the game.

284. Kimber was after money, real money.

285. And where was he gonna find that?

286. Racing booms

287. in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.

288. Lots of men are coming home with payments from the Army, Navy.

289. A lot want to drink and gamble and enjoy themselves.

290. There's masses of people going to racecourses.

291. So all the money populated there

292. and of course all the people who wanted money

293. populated there behind them. - And by the early 20th century

294. he's got a gang with his brothers Joe and Harry, and other hard men

295. who are going to the racecourses of the Midlands

296. and the North. They're known as the Brummager Boys.

297. They pickpocket, and if you know you've been pickpocketed

298. and try to stop it, they're going to duff you up badly,

299. because there's hardly any racecourse security

300. and the few policemen there are scared.

301. These gangs also blackmail bookmakers.

302. “You want to stand on that pitch? That's a good pitch,

303. you've got to give us a fiver."

304. “You've got a stall you're standing on,

305. two and sixpence." That's 12.5 pence a race. Six races,

306. that's 15 shillings, 75 pence.

307. That's as much as a poor man could earn in a week.

308. "You've got a blackboard, you write on the blackboard

309. the names of the horses. What do you need for that?"

310. A stick of chalk, two and a tanner, two and sixpence a race.

311. At Epsom, Doncaster, the big meetings,

312. there could be hundreds of bookmakers. This is big income.

313. Billy Kimber and his gang made at least £400 a day,

314. which translates to £22,000 a day, about eight million a year

315. in today's money.

316. Now, Billy Kimber and the Birmingham Gang

317. ran the racecourse rackets in the Midlands and the North.

318. No challengers in the Midlands and the North,

319. up towards Newcastle they've got their own gang.

320. They don't bother with Scotland, Glasgow gangs run courses there.

321. So it's no longer just fighting each other over territory,

322. but actually the organisation of criminal rackets around betting,

323. gambling, liquor licences.

324. So they're a really distinctive new period of organised crime

325. in the city. So in a short space of time,

326. Kimber's influence had become widespread.

327. His gang, known as the Birmingham Gang,

328. are terrorising racecourses up and down the country

329. with no regards for the consequences.

330. Could this man be the real Tommy Shelby?

331. By the beginning of the 1920s,

332. almost all British racecourses are under the control of one man:

333. Billy Kimber.

334. The Birmingham Gang and their London allies

335. are extorting money from the bookmakers,

336. but they're racist. They're anti-Semitic.

337. They would target Jewish bookmakers in the East End.

338. One of whom is a man called Alfie Solomon.

339. Now, compared to Kimber and most other members of the gangs

340. who deserted in the First World War, Solomon served with honour.

341. He received three service medals

342. and he comes out and he becomes a bookmaker.

343. He's a secular Jewish man. His dad's got a greengrocer's

344. in Covent Garden. They had a servant growing up.

345. But he's bookmaking.

346. One event will change the course of Alfie Solomon's life

347. like no other.

348. And a really vile man called Tommy Armstrong,

349. slogger, member of the Birmingham Gang,

350. comes past, and he's offering 11 to 4 on a horse.

351. And Armstrong says, "I'll have 12 quid on that

352. on the nod." That meant he wanted it on credit.

353. If it loses, is he going to pay up?

354. Of course he's not. But if it wins, does he want paying?

355. Of course he does. Solomon says, "No I ain't taking the bet.

356. I'm not having that." Anyway, it kicked off.

357. The horse won.

358. Armstrong's mucky drunk by now.

359. He comes back, demands his money.

360. Solomon refuses.

361. Armstrong took his field glasses, his heavy viewing glasses,

362. smashed 'em into the face of Alfie Solomon.

363. He collapsed on the floor in a bloody mess,

364. and then Armstrong slammed him in his face with his boots.

365. Solomon's left there, prone,

366. his face a bloody mass, and with several teeth missing.

367. This attack on Alfie Solomon transforms him.

368. I've got no evidence at all before the attack

369. that he was a vicious criminal,

370. but afterwards he certainly becomes one.

371. Alfie Soloman seems to suddenly become violent

372. out of absolutely nowhere. That shows to me underlying rage,

373. and it needed to be unlocked. Someone doesn't just become violent

374. one day out of absolutely nowhere, for no reason.

375. I mean, he had a reason, he was beaten up.

376. But that's not a reason to start a criminal career.

377. So I think that unlocked a rage in him that he had

378. for a very long time.

379. Alfie Solomon was just another link in the chain.

380. There are different groups. So you have the money earners

381. and you have the people who need to enforce that, enforcers.

382. They'll go out, do the street work, and they'll break arms,

383. and they'll kill people, and dominate people,

384. and they'll collect the money. But that's all they're good for.

385. But the bosses, the real organised crime figures

386. that do very well at this and rise up, they can do both.

387. Billy Kimber had gone from a backstreet thug, petty criminal

388. to one of the first organised crime bosses in England.

389. I think some of the crimes that we see Kimber engage in

390. are narcissistically driven. He became a little bit addicted

391. to what he was getting, and it felt really good,

392. and he felt he deserved more because of that,

393. and I think that drove him to then want to go to London

394. and kind of pursue crime there as well.

395. Kimber and his boys had been raking in money

396. working the country's racecourses like their own personal gold mine.

397. But one thing we know about organised crime

398. is that when money's flowing, you'd better watch your back.

399. London bookmaker Alfie Solomon has just been severely beaten

400. by Billy Kimber's lieutenant, Tommy Armstrong.

401. Alfie Solomon then turns to

402. the governor of the Jewish East End underworld,

403. Edward Emmanuel.

404. He was king of the underworld with the Jewish people of the time

405. in the East End. He was really cunning,

406. he knew how to put things together. - Like Kimber,

407. he's a fearsome fighter, a thug, a man who people are scared of.

408. On one occasion he has a fight, he gets shot.

409. Even though he's shot, he chases the bloke down the street

410. and batters him. But he's also, like Kimber,

411. got something up here. He's got a brain.

412. Edward Emmanuel is a very clever figure.

413. He's very good at what he does.

414. Cos he's one of them people who understands

415. to keep in the background is where the real power is.

416. He was very good at moving guys around,

417. which is another real trait of an organised crime boss.

418. In my opinion, Edward Emmanuel is England's first godfather.

419. He wants to get rid of Kimber and his London allies.

420. He's got a team of Anglo-Jewish tearaways,

421. but on their own they're not strong enough.

422. Things move very rapidly after Solomon turns to Emmanuel

423. for help. Emmanuel turns to an up and coming young gangster.

424. His mum is English, his dad was Italian,

425. but came to England as a youngster from Parma in northern Italy.

426. The Sabini Gang were quite interesting.

427. They was vicious thugs. There was about 300 members of the Sabini gang

428. at its prime. Where they settled was in Clerkenwell,

429. in Little Italy of course,

430. just the other side of the East End of London.

431. And he started off as a bouncer, that was his first kind of innings

432. into that world. He was a very rough and tumble,

433. very in your face street brawler.

434. And they're called in to back up Alfie Solomon

435. and Emanuel's Anglo-Jewish tearaways

436. against Kimber's Birmingham Gang and their London mates.

437. So began the biggest gang war this country had ever known.

438. So the Birmingham Gang and their London allies

439. realise Sabini's been called in. They corner him

440. at Greenford trotting track. They're shouting,

441. “We're gonna murder him." They've got wood, planks of wood.

442. They're hitting him. Somebody says, “Get a gun, shoot him."

443. Luckily, he's saved by the police.

444. It turns out that the gun wasn't registered.

445. He should have really been prosecuted for it,

446. but he got away with it. Throughout spring and summer of '21,

447. there are shootings, beatings at racecourses,

448. and in London and around railway stations in the capital.

449. It really was dangerous. Things are getting out of hand.

450. This isn't good for business The newspapers pick up on this.

451. Racecourse ruffians, ruffs of the turf,

452. all these kinds of phrases are being used.

453. Too much attention from the police. It's interesting, isn't it?

454. Press attention only really gets going

455. once there's a spectacle.

456. When ordinary bookmakers were getting extorted,

457. no-one really paid attention.

458. So someone calls a meeting.

459. It's going to be at Collier Street,

460. the house in King's Cross where Sabini's now living.

461. They decide that they'll have to make peace

462. for the sake of their businesses.

463. Billy Kimber turns up with some of the McDonalds.

464. They're having a good drink, and he's going to leave

465. Who turns up but Alfie Solomon?

466. Now, they're racist.

467. They hate Jewish men and women, and Kimber goes for him.

468. Pulls a revolver and he calls him racist names.

469. There's a scuffle, and in the scuffle,

470. as Alfie Solomon is trying to stop Kimber from shooting him...

471. the gun goes off...

472. and the bullet actually goes

473. into Kimber's back. Everybody disperses.

474. Kimber's found unconscious on the street outside.

475. He's sent to hospital.

476. Allies of Kimber told me that that night

477. members of the London gang

478. supporting Kimber and the Birmingham Gang

479. surrounded the hospital.

480. It tells you the power that Kimber had.

481. They go to court.

482. Solomon admits that he accidentally shot Kimber.

483. Billy Kimber is a witnes s who refuses to testify,

484. and all he says is this:

485. “If he says he shot me, well, that's up to him.

486. But only cowards use revolvers,

487. and I would rather blow my brains out

488. than use a shooter." The case is dismissed.

489. But the worst was yet to come.

490. What do we actually know about Billy Kimber?

491. We know that Billy Kimber and the Birmingham Gang

492. are determined to maintain their dominance down south.

493. But Edward Emmanuel and Darby Sabini have other ideas.

494. Epsom. Probably the biggest meeting of the year.

495. The Birmingham Gang decide they're gonna really show

496. who's in charge.

497. The Epsom Derby,

498. one of the biggest racing events of the year,

499. was attended by over 200,000 people. But get this: they had no security.

500. This is a gift for Billy Kimber.

501. Birmingham Gang members are going down there,

502. terrorising bookmakers.

503. After racing, some Leeds bookmakers are leaving

504. when they get attacked by 20-odd

505. really vicious, horrible men from Birmingham.

506. They had been paying protection to Kimber before,

507. but it looks like they're moving towards Sabini and to Solomon.

508. The Birmingham Gang inflict terrible injuries on them,

509. and then they decide to go for a drink in a pub,

510. which is where they're eventually arrested.

511. Out of the 20-odd, 17 men are sent down.

512. These 17 men belong to different little crews

513. within the Birmingham Gang.

514. That weakens Kimber. He's lost 17 of his most feared fighters.

515. He then decides he's gonna make a massive show of strength

516. at Bath in the summer.

517. The railway station at Bath

518. suddenly is surrounded by a horde of Birmingham hardmen.

519. Many of them are not part of the Birmingham Gang,

520. but are attracted to Bath by the opportunity of having a pop,

521. having a go at the Londoners, particularly the Jewish Londoners.

522. Kimber's there.

523. His main fighters who are not in prison are there.

524. They start beating up Jewish bookmakers,

525. and Kimber and another horrible Birmingham Gang member

526. batter Alfie Solomon, who goes down.

527. They also attack his clerk,

528. an inoffensive bloke called Charles Bild.

529. They hit him with everything, and then somebody smashes him

530. with a sandbag! The poor bloke goes down

531. and eventually, when the police come to save him, he's unconscious,

532. covered in blood. Billy Kimber gets charged

533. for that assault. But in September 1921,

534. when it goes to court, no-one shows up

535. to give evidence against him. So the case is dismissed.

536. But before they leave, Kimber's lawyer announces to the court,

537. “Don't worry, there'll be no more of this trouble,

538. because this has all been sorted out."

539. Cleverly,

540. Edward Emanuel starts the Bookmakers Protection Association

541. to stop the ruffianism on the turf,

542. to stop the blackmailing of bookmakers.

543. Well, what then happens is the Jockey Club like this,

544. they're really upset by all the bad newspaper reports,

545. people are going to stop coming racing,

546. so they back this new organisation,

547. which appears to be legitimate. The police are quite happy,

548. cos they can say, this is a legitimate organisation.

549. But what does he do?

550. He employs Derby Sabini and his men as stewards

551. to enforce order.

552. But this was a very clever strategic move

553. to protect the Jewish bookmakers that are constantly being threatened

554. and attacked, and preyed upon by, of course. Billy Kimber.

555. This also legitimised Darby Sabini

556. and everything that they needed to do next,

557. including protecting all their organisation.

558. Essentially, the Sabinis are untouchable,

559. because the Jockey Club, in control of flat racing,

560. and the police like the idea of an official organisation

561. which they can support.

562. Emmanuel has won.

563. The Birmingham boys have been outwitted.

564. They can't operate down south anymore.

565. So the boys insist that no Southern bookmakers

566. can operate in the Midlands or the North ever again.

567. It says here, a meeting is finally called

568. at Beresford's House to discuss terms of a truce.

569. By September, newspapers are reporting

570. that the gangs have divided England between them,

571. that the Sabinis would have the south of England,

572. and that the Birmingham Gang

573. would have the Midlands and the North.

574. This means that until the mid-1920s

575. the Sabinis rule supreme on Southern England's racecourses

576. and those in London.

577. But that was the time for Billy Kimber to walk away.

578. What's fascinating about Kimber and the Birmingham Gang

579. is that as soon as he steps away, the organisation disintegrates.

580. They're all fighting each other again, just like the slogging gangs.

581. Without him at the centre, it all just falls apart.

582. Now, Emmanuel is moving slowly away from gangsterism

583. into legitimacy, and he sees an opportunity

584. to start up a legitimate printing company,

585. which will print all printing needs of the racecourse bookmakers:

586. their tickets, instead of the chalk, runners,

587. racing lists. He's clever enough to step back,

588. pull the strings of the Sabinis, make money,

589. but start up a legitimate printing company,

590. the Portsea Printing Press. Now, down south

591. the Jockey Club have decided they've got to take action.

592. They bring in a new force of security men

593. and the Sabinis are gradually pushed out.

594. But what they do, they regroup in Soho.

595. They take over protection rackets of the illegal drinking clubs

596. and the spielers. They also extorted protection money

597. from restaurant owners, publicans, not only in Soho,

598. but in their heartlands of King's Cross and Clerkenwell.

599. Albert Dimes and Bert Marsh,

600. leading towards Jack Spott and Billy Hill.

601. He dies a broken man in 1950.

602. Alfie Soloman was targeted by other gangs

603. into the mid-1930s, and unable to get police protection,

604. he then disappeared.

605. Kimber, so it's said, about 1926

606. shoots through the windows of The Griffin,

607. one of the Sabinis' hangouts, and flees to America,

608. where it's said he kills a man, and then he goes off to Chicago.

609. Well, who's running Chicago in '26? Al Capone.

610. Billy Kimber had a real depth of a person

611. and you see this all the way through his journey

612. from the street smarts to the brutality

613. to the real CEO managerial decisions that he made even back then,

614. which of course positioned him as one of the leading lights

615. of organised crime in the UK. - Kimber comes back.

616. By now he's married to Elizabeth Garnham,

617. the sister of one of his pals from Chapel Market.

618. And he was then clever enough to realise when he was beaten

619. that he needed to go legitimate. I think he was pushed into that

620. as well by his wife, who like Sabini's wife,

621. wanted middle-class respectability for their children.

622. Kimber would eventually settle in Devon in Torquey,

623. in a house overlooking the bay. He too would reinvent himself

624. as a legitimate racecourse bookmaker.

625. An advert he took out with a local paper would read,

626. "Bet with Bill Kimber, a man who's reliable."

627. And there's a real irony here,

628. because he becomes a leading member

629. of the local Devon Bookmakers Protection Association,

630. the very organisation that in effect brought him down,

631. started by Kimber's nemesis Edward Emmanuel

632. as a means for him to take over down south,

633. but the BPA by the '30s has become a legitimate,

634. respectable organisation.

635. We know that eventually Billy did retire,

636. but prior to that, psychologically he was on guard his whole life,

637. right from the beginning, the slums in Birmingham

638. and throughout his entire kind of criminal career.

639. I think what that does to a person is it sets them

640. in this constant sense of fight or flight, which means

641. your adrenal system is activated, which means

642. that you can never really rest. I think that is only sustainable

643. for so long in terms of a person's lifespan,

644. I don't think it's something you can do forever.

645. Kimber eventually dies in 1945 in a nursing home.

646. He died one of the last of the real Peaky Blinders.

647. If we look at how Darby Sabini, Alfie Solomon,

648. Billy Kimber are portrayed in the series,

649. there is a fundamental difference. Darby Sabini is depicted

650. as a bella figura, like a Sicilian Mafia don,

651. elegantly dressed,

652. with a walking cane.

653. He wasn't. He didn't wear fancy clothes. He wasn't elegant.

654. He wasn't a bella figura.

655. He wore a flat cap, a collarless shirt,

656. working man's clothes.

657. He didn't speak Italian.

658. He regarded himself as an Englishman.

659. Alfie Solomon is portrayed as an Orthodox Jewish man.

660. He wasn't. He was from a secular Jewish background,

661. a family settled in England for generations. Billy Kimber

662. is given as a Londoner, a small Londoner. He wasn't.

663. He was a Brummie. - People like the romanticism,

664. the glamour of it all,

665. and this suggestion of a different society

666. in Birmingham that people might not have otherwise been aware of.

667. I think people will always be drawn to gangsters,

668. because in many ways they feel like the stuff of myth,

669. partly because these men that we see,

670. and it's usually men, sometimes women but usually men,

671. are very good at creating stories,

672. and very good at creating legacy,

673. and human beings, we like stories.

674. They create a mystery. I think we're drawn to understanding that.

675. What lessons should we take from the real Peaky Blinders

676. and the gangs of the 1920s?

677. Most importantly, gang members and organised gangsters

678. are not meant to be admired. These were not

679. glamorous anti-heroes who people looked to for support.

680. They weren't Robin Hood characters that looked after the poor:

681. they preyed upon the poor.

682. They were feared members of the working class.

683. They didn't look after the poor, the Peaky Blinders,

684. they beat them up, bullied them. Sabini, Kimber, Emmanuel

685. took money from poorer people whenever they could.

686. I suppose it's not really surprising

687. that a fictional portrayal of a criminal organisation

688. doesn't match with the reality.

689. After all, it's the job of historical fiction

690. to impart glamour to the everyday, to make it exciting.

691. But what's fascinating isn't so much that a brilliant television series

692. found a devoted audience, it's how little attitudes have changed.

693. We're still convinced that criminality

694. is largely a working class phenomenon,

695. and street gangs, they're not a thing of the past,

696. they exist today in every city in the world. But why?

697. Perhaps there is something innate in people

698. that makes them want to seek out fellowship, community,

699. and where none exists, construct their own.

700. But I suppose that's why we need the legends.

701. But when reality is not to our taste,

702. legends don't often leave room for ordinary folk.