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| Typical Peaky Blinders Gang Members |
Residents are running guided tours taking in parts of what were at one time the city's most violent districts. There has been interest from across the country and the first tours have attracted up to 120 people, eager to hear tales of notorious criminals like Billy Kimber and Tommy Shelby, whose rivalry is outlined in the series.
Rose Pocklington who has lived in Digbeth for a decade and sits on the residents' association, will lead the tours. "I had the idea while watching the TV series," she said. "I thought it was bound to get people interested in the area. I've always been fascinated by industrial history - and Birmingham is full of it."
Ms Pocklington researched the Peaky Blinders by studying history books and the police archives, where details of gang members' arrests are recorded. "Those archives are very good for mug-shots," she said. "The youngest arrest of a gang member I came across was just 13 - he got done for a stabbing."
She reports that as far as she can tell, there was no one gang called the Peaky Blinders. "The Peaky Blinders were the hoodies of their day," she said. "It was a term used by the media to describe a particular young man - or young woman - who dressed in a certain way and caused trouble.
"They wore gaudy neckerchiefs, steel-capped boots and bowler hats, which they used to shape into a kind of jug-spout at the front. As fashions changed, their hats became flat caps. Life was hard, so a lot of people tried to identify themselves with this very aggressive kind of masculinity."
The Rainbow pub is the first place that visitors call at on the tour. It has high, stained-glass Victorian windows and gleaming optics, and bears more than a passing resemblance to The Garrison, pub owned by Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) in the television series.
This pub, said Ms Pocklington, is where the Peaky Blinders were first name-checked in newspapers. "One of the first press reports to mention the Peaky Blinders involved an incident at The Rainbow pub," said Ms Pocklington. "A gang dressed in the Peaky Blinders fashion attacked a young lad named George Eastwood because he made the mistake of ordering a ginger beer, rather than ale. He managed to escape but suffered a fractured skull."
Alcester Street and Milk Street also had their gangs and form part of the tour. "You would get charismatic men springing up, like Thomas Shelby, and people would travel for miles to be part of his gang," said Ms Pocklington.
"Unlike the big mill towns and mining towns, where discipline was enforced by being part of a large industry, Birmingham's industry centred on smaller workshops so loyalties lay with certain streets and families. Milk Street was notorious for fighting. I found records which said a member of the Milk Street gang was stabbed to death by somebody from the Alcester Street gang."
Although the series is set in Small Heath, the tour remains rigidly in Digbeth "Being from Digbeth, I wanted to concentrate on this area," said Ms Pocklington. "This area has always been a bit like the East End of London in that sense," she said.
Like so many inner cities, former industrial buildings have been converted into city-centre apartments. "It's a much safer area now," said Ms Pocklington, "but there's enough of the past around to give you a taste of what those days would have been like."
The tour is supported by Visit Birmingham, which says it is pleased visitors are learning more about the city's fascinating - if violent - past.
Birmingham Tourism
More information about the Peaky Blinders Tours
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