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Steven Knight’s period crime series Peaky Blinders is loosely based on the titular criminal gang, notoriously famous in 1880s Birmingham for illegal bookmaking and violence.
While Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby and the other Peaky boys are fictional characters, the crime series actually portrays many characters based on real-life historical figures.
One obvious example is Winston Churchill (former Prime Minister of the UK), who is featured in Peaky Blinders Seasons 1 and 2. He hires Major Campbell to find the stolen shipment of guns from the gang. However, in addition to Churchill, the show also included many other real-life figures.
More on this in our story.
5 Peaky Blinders characters that are based on real-life figures
1) Billy Kimber
Charlie Creed-Miles played the Birmingham Boys leader, Billy Kimber, who was the secondary antagonist in Peaky Blinders Season 1. The leader of a rival gang to the Peaky boys, Billy Kimber, was a real-life figure who had many small gangs under him, and he controlled the racecourses in the Midlands and the North.
While the Blinders ambushed the Birmingham Boys in the Season 1 finale, with Tommy Shelby fatally shooting Billy Kimber in cold blood, this was not the case. Interestingly, it was the Birmingham Boys who usurped the titular gang's rule in 1910.
2) Darby Sabini
Noah Taylor's Darby Sabini was another major antagonist in Peaky Blinders Season 2, who was based on a real-life figure. Darby Sabini began as Tommy Shelby’s biggest opponent but eventually the Blinders managed to neutralize the threat.
However, according to history, Darby Sabini, a British-Italian mob boss, was the leader of the Sabini gang and was popularly known as the "king of the racecourse gangs".
He also became famous for preserving and developing the Little Italy section of London and eventually became its Godfather. Interestingly, after the Birmingham Boys defeated Peaky Blinders, they were usurped by the Sabini gang in 1930.
3) Jessie Eden
Charlie Murphy made her Peaky Blinders debut as Jessie Eden, a union leader who went against Tommy Shelby. She demanded equal rights and pay for female factory workers. However, Tommy later seduced her and used her political connections to gain leverage.
Jessie Eden was a real and influential historical figure who successfully led the 1926 UK strike and fought for equal rights among female workers. Many historical activists even called the show out for their grave misrepresentation of the real Jessie Eden.
While the show aptly portrayed Eden’s efforts to aid the female factory workers and organize multiple strikes across Britain, her fictional storyline with Tommy Shelby somehow nullified those struggles.
4) Alfie Solomons
While fans rarely liked a villain against Tommy Shelby, Tom Hardy’s Alfie Solomons achieved the impossible with his Peaky Blinders debut in Season 2.
Hardy’s Alfie was a fictionalized version of a real-life and widely feared Jewish gangster from London (named Alfie Solomon), who was at the prime of his power in the 1920s. Knight described the inspiration behind Alfie to the Jewish Chronicle:
"It was the same in London as it was in New York. There was an Italian quarter and a Jewish quarter and immigrants would stick together as immigrants do. Some of the locals would see the gangsters as offering protection against outsiders and that made them heroes in some circles."
While the creator added different traits to the character, he was based on a real-life Jewish gangster he read about.
5) Oswald Mosley
Sam Claflin played the recurring antagonist in Peaky Blinders, who tries to recruit Tommy to the growing fascist movement in the country. Since Tommy did not share his fascist ideologies, he quickly became a menacing antagonist.
While the events of the show and Claflin’s character’s interactions with Tommy were fictional, the portrayal was pretty accurate. Oswald Mosley was a British aristocrat who quickly turned to fascism. His founded party, British Union of Fascists, even lended its support to Nazi Germany, until its forced disbandment in the 1940s.
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