Oxford Academic details the Murphy Riots of June 1867, which saw 100,000 people take to the streets to demolish Irish homes. The anti-Irish and anti-Catholic movements during this time also forced the gangs to rise up due to relentless hate speech telling citizens that the Irish were cannibals and their religious leaders were pick-pockets and liars.

The Great Famine in 1845 doubled the Irish population within five years and so did the gangs. The Peaky Blinders started out in economic hardship in low-class Britain, pick-pocketing locals and blackmailing business owners in the 1880s. Thomas Shelby, in the show, comes off as wealthy and influential in the streets of Birmingham, but the real gang was impoverished, was not made up of one family, and way younger. However, their story goes back much further.

The Peaky Blinders gang did not just pop up in the 1920s, but rather the men who made up this gang belonged to various backstreet gangs in Birmingham starting in the 1890s through the 20th Century.

Cigar bar in shelby township