HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-05-14T15:42:26.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Lady swindlers: 6 women who turned to lives of crime and became queens of the underworld
items: Your guide to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists (BUF)
items: Peaky Blinders: The story so far, plus the real figures to expect in season 6
items: The A-Z of British gangs and gangsters
items: Who were the real Billy Boys, the Glasgow gang in Peaky Blinders?
items: Gangs and knife-crime fears: how has Britain responded through history?
items: In pictures: what did the real Peaky Blinders look like?
items: The real Peaky Blinders
items: Poldark, Peaky Blinders and 6 other historical TV shows that have tourists flocking to Britain
items: Peaky Blinders: behind the scenes with creator Steven Knight

Lady swindlers: 6 women who turned to lives of crime and became queens of the underworld
type: item
date: 2024-11-21T14:58:54.000Z
creator: Rosalind Crone
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Hoaxes
subject: Peaky Blinders
description: The BBC series, Lady Swindlers with Lucy Worsley, tells the stories of female criminals from the 18th to 20th centuries. Their chicanery often earned them great riches, yet, as series consultant Rosalind Crone reveals through six case studies, their schemes didn’t always go to plan
encoded: Alice Diamond: the “queen of the forty thieves” who amassed a fortune While the Peaky Blinders, Brigton Billy Boys and Charles Sabini’s mob terrorised the streets of Britain’s major cities, there was another, equally notorious all-female gang whose shoplifting sprees brought havoc to London’s West End. Read more | The real Peaky Blinders The Forty Elephants, named after the thieves in the legend of Ali Baba and their geographical home (Elephant and Castle), were active from about the 1880s. By the mid-1910s, the gang had a new leader, Alice Diamond (alias Diana Black), described in newspapers of the time as “Queen of the Forty Thieves”. Alice was born in 1896 in the Lambeth workhouse infirmary, and grew up alongside seven siblings in the grim tenements of Southwark, south London. According to the 1911 census, Alice had begun working as a servant when she was just 14 years old. While this was an age of growing opportunities for some working-class women to move into better-paid employment in factories and offices, others – domestic servants, dressmakers and laundresses – found themselves stuck in low-paid work, unable to participate (legally) in new forms of leisure and consumerism. Read more | What was life like for women in Edwardian Britain? The new West End department stores, with their accessible displays of ready-to-wear clothes, proved an irresistible temptation to many. Some shoplifters worked alone, others formed groups, and for Alice and her gang shoplifting became a career. New members were inducted and trained. All had to abide by a ‘hoisters’ code’, which bound them to support each other, share proceeds equally and abstain from “drinking before a raid”. A Metropolitan Police detective explained that the women would dress up and “descend upon a West End store like a plague of locusts… practically clean[ing] the place out inside an hour”. Stolen clothes, fabrics and furs were rolled up and stuffed inside their grafter’s bloomers (pants with giant pockets). …

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Your guide to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists (BUF)
type: item
date: 2022-02-23T12:36:37.000Z
creator: Emma Mason
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Fascism
subject: Peaky Blinders
description: He was Britain’s most notorious fascist, known for his violent anti-Semitic rhetoric and for maintaining friendships with the likes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. But how much do you know about Oswald Mosley and his political party, the British Union of Fascists (BUF)?
encoded: Ahead of the sixth season of the BBC gangster drama Peaky Blinders, which features Sam Claflin as Oswald Mosley, the show’s newest antagonist, we explore the fascist leader’s life and legacy… Oswald Mosley biography: key facts about the fascist leader Name: Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley [the title was inherited, not awarded, via a baronetcy] Born: 16 November 1896, Mayfair, London, England Died: 3 December 1980, Orsay, near Paris, France, aged 84 Famous for: Being Britain’s most notorious fascist. He founded and was leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) from 1932 to 1940. He was also leader of the BUF’s successor, the Union Movement, from 1948 until his death Spouse(s): Diana Guinness (née Freeman-Mitford, m 1936–80), who he married at the home of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels; and Lady Cynthia Mosley (m 1920–33) Children: 5 – Vivien Mosley, Nicholas Mosley & Michael Mosley (with his first wife, Cynthia); and Oswald Alexander Mosley & Max Mosley (with his second wife, Diana) Who was Oswald Mosley? The eldest son of a baronet, Sir Oswald Mosley was born into an aristocratic family in London in 1896. He rose to fame as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the 1920s before becoming the founder and head of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in the 1930s. As leader of the BUF, Mosley led Britain’s vitriolic anti-Semitic fascist movement. The BUF embarked on a militant campaign of intimidation, harassment, and violence against Britain’s Jewish population, particularly in London’s East End – home to around 100,000 Jews at the time. When was the British Union of Fascists active? The British Union of Fascists was established by Oswald Mosley in October 1932. It disbanded shortly after the beginning of the Second World War, in May 1940, so it was active for around seven-and-a-half years in total. What was Oswald Mosley’s childhood like? Born into an aristocratic family, Mosley enjoyed a privileged upbringing – he was educated at a preparatory school before entering W…

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Peaky Blinders: The story so far, plus the real figures to expect in season 6
type: item
date: 2022-02-14T05:00:41.000Z
creator: Emma Mason
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Peaky Blinders
subject: TV interest
description: Flat-cap-wearing Birmingham gangster Thomas ‘Tommy’ Shelby and his motley crew are set to return to television screens this month for the sixth and final season of Peaky Blinders. The gritty BBC drama takes inspiration from the gangs of late 19th-century Birmingham – but was there really a gang named the Peaky Blinders who hid razors in their caps? And are characters like Alfie Solomons, Oswald Mosley and Jessie Eden based on real people? Here’s our recap of the plotlines behind seasons one to five, plus what to expect from season six…
encoded: **This article contains spoilers for seasons 1­–5 of ‘Peaky Blinders’** When is Peaky Blinders set? Set in 1920s Birmingham, Peaky Blinders follows the exploits of a back-street razor gang in the aftermath of the First World War. At its head is war veteran, bookmaker, and criminal entrepreneur Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy). But Tommy’s ambitions stretch far beyond running the streets of Small Heath and making money for his Irish-Romani family: he is determined to move the Shelbys up in the world and make the family bookmaking business a legitimate enterprise. In an astronomic rise through British society, by the end of season four Tommy buys himself a sprawling countryside mansion and even manages to get elected as a Member of Parliament (MP). Follow the links below to jump to each section: What happened in season 1 of Peaky Blinders? What happened in season 2 of Peaky Blinders? What happened in season 3 of Peaky Blinders? What happened in season 4 of Peaky Blinders? What happened in season 5 of Peaky Blinders? What can we expect from season 6 of Peaky Blinders? How much of Peaky Blinders is drawn from history? Steven Knight’s BAFTA-award-winning drama was inspired by the real gangs who operated in Birmingham in the late 19th century. But in reality there was no single gang named ‘the Peaky Blinders’. Writing for HistoryExtra, historian Andrew Davies explains it was “quite the reverse: opposing gangs, all sharing [an] outlandish style, sought each other out on the streets of Birmingham and in late-night confrontations outside the city’s music halls”. The term ‘peaky blinders’ was first coined in Birmingham in the 1890s, Davies explains. It was used to refer to a young man who was assumed to be a gang member and who dressed in a particular style – more on that later. The term was distinctive to Birmingham. “In Manchester and neighbouring Salford, gang members were known as ‘scuttlers’,” says Davies. “In London they became known by the more enduring label ‘hooligan’”…

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The A-Z of British gangs and gangsters
type: item
date: 2020-07-23T21:15:07.000Z
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Peaky Blinders
subject: TV interest
description: From the Krays twins and the real Peaky Blinders to football hooligans and the gunpowder plot, historian Julian Humphrys guides us through the dark alleys of Britain’s criminal underworld
encoded: A… is for Armstrongs In the years before the union of the English and Scottish crowns in 1603, gangs from reiving families like the Armstrongs would regularly descend on isolated farms on the Anglo-Scottish border and carry away loot, livestock and hostages. In 1583, Willie Armstrong of Kinmont led 300 men of his clan on a raid across the English border, ransacking the farms of the Tarset Valley and murdering eight of its inhabitants. He returned ten years later, this time in an alliance with the Elliots of Liddesdale. In 1596, even though there was an immunity from arrest so that border families could attend a meeting, Armstrong was seized by the English and incarcerated in Carlisle Castle. Undeterred, 80 of his supporters broke into the castle at night and brought their leader safely back to Scotland. B… is for Basingstoke The small town of Basingstoke in Hampshire seems an unlikely location for mass civil disobedience, but in 1881 matters there had got so bad that they were even debated in parliament. At the time, Basingstoke boasted 50 pubs and a reputation for drunkenness, so when the Salvation Army turned up in 1880 to preach temperance the new arrivals enjoyed the backing of many leading inhabitants. But Basingstoke also had a large brewing industry, whose employees were alarmed that their livelihoods were under threat. Egged on by their employers, they formed a mob with the express aim of disrupting the Salvation Army’s activities. The Massaganians, as they called themselves (because they would ‘mass again’ if dispersed), began with heckling and jostling, but as time went on their activities escalated into-full scale rioting. Troops had to be deployed before order was restored. Murder, Inc: the rise and fall of New York City’s mafia hitmen The real Peaky Blinders C… is for Cock Road Gang Not all gang violence was townbased. The Cock Road Gang was an infamous gang of robbers and protection racketeers which flourished in Bitton (outside Bristol) in the late 18…

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Who were the real Billy Boys, the Glasgow gang in Peaky Blinders?
type: item
date: 2019-10-08T08:00:05.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Peaky Blinders
subject: Trends-Entertainment
subject: TV interest
description: Series five of Peaky Blinders has Tommy Shelby and his Birmingham clan clashing with a Glasgow gang known as the ‘Billy Boys’ – and gang chief Billy Fullerton is the inspiration for one of the villains in the drama. Historian Andrew Davies reveals the real history of the 1920s Scottish gangsters
encoded: During the 1920s and 30s, the Scottish city of Glasgow was home to a number of well-organised sectarian gangs. The most famous of these was the Billy Boys, a Protestant street gang from the East End of Glasgow. Here, historian Andrew Davies shares a closer look at the city’s gang wars… The Brigton Billy Boys were the biggest and most powerful gang in Glasgow during the 1920s and 1930s. They took their name from the Dutch Protestant monarch William of Orange (‘King Billy’), who later became William III, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. His victory at the battle of the Boyne in 1690 had secured Protestant rule in England and Scotland, as well as Ireland. The ‘Billies’ recruited Protestant youths from across Bridgeton (‘Brigton’) and surrounding districts in Glasgow’s East End. Most joined in their late teens. Many stayed active in the gang into their twenties and thirties. At their peak in the late 1920s the Billy Boys numbered 800, making them the largest gang in Britain by far. They were divided into sections 40-strong, each with its own leader. They in turn took their orders from Billy Fullerton, the gang’s ‘chief’. Who was Billy Fullerton, gang chief of the Billy Boys? Billy Fullerton was a street fighting man. On leaving school, he found work in a shipyard. However, in common with many young men of his generation, he experienced repeated bouts of unemployment in his teens. He gained a following and became adept at marshalling the Billy Boys in activities such as church parades and religious processions, using them as an opportunity to march his gang through what were identified as Catholic thoroughfares. Fullerton also played the newspapers and was fond of giving interviews that portrayed himself as a local celebrity, someone who had left behind the world of the gangs and ‘gone straight’. In pictures: What did the real Peaky Blinders look like? As well as marshalling parades, Billy Fullerton also acted as the gang’s ‘secretary’ – a full-time job, as he exp…

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Gangs and knife-crime fears: how has Britain responded through history?
type: item
date: 2019-10-07T13:30:31.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Victorian
subject: Period
subject: Peaky Blinders
description: British cities are in the midst of a crime epidemic. Or are they? Two experts consider the historical precedents for the moral panics over knife-crime and moped robberies that have swept the nation in recent times | Compiled by Chris Bowlby, a BBC journalist specialising in history
encoded: Current concerns about gangs and knife-crime are not new – far from it. Similar anxieties were voiced across England’s major cities during the latter decades of the 19th century. Then, as now, most gang members were young men, and gangs were overwhelmingly concentrated in districts already blighted by poverty, ill-health and unemployment. Like their modern counterparts, the ‘Scuttlers’ or gang fighters of Victorian Manchester and Salford fought with knives, although they also used the buckle ends of their heavy leather belts. Scuttlers, like Birmingham’s ‘Sloggers’ and ‘Peaky Blinders’ (who emerged during the 1890s) were fiercely territorial. Encroachment into a district colonised by a rival gang was the surest way to spark a fight. In Birmingham, as in Manchester, members of rival gangs also sought each other in city-centre music halls and nearby beerhouses. Considerable kudos was at stake. Peaky Blinders: behind the scenes with creator Steven Knight 6 notorious unsolved crimes from history Young men who courted women from rival districts also found themselves at risk. Male gang members regarded local women as their property – and viewed a youth from a rival district walking his ‘sweetheart’ home from a music hall as an affront. Retribution might be meted out on the spot, or a battle with the gang from the offending youth’s district might be arranged. Today, these confrontations arise out of infringements of ‘respect’. Victorians didn’t use that word as we use it, but the sparks that ignited fights, leading to countless stabbings, are startlingly similar. That said, the two eras diverge in one key respect: Manchester’s scuttlers and Birmingham’s Peaky Blinders seldom killed one another. They set out to scar and maim opponents. They fought for status, not profit, and most of them grew out of gang-fighting by their early twenties. Scuttlers and Peaky Blinders attracted extensive newspaper coverage, but only made headline news in the local press. London’s street gangs…

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In pictures: what did the real Peaky Blinders look like?
type: item
date: 2019-08-27T14:06:00.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Historical people
subject: Peaky Blinders
subject: TV interest
description: The hit BBC drama Peaky Blinders takes inspiration from the real gangs of late 19th-century Birmingham. Its members were marked by two defining passions: natty streetwear and extreme violence. So what did they really look like?
encoded: These images from the archives of the West Midlands Police Museum are late 19th and early 20th-century ‘lock-up mugshots’ which show style-conscious criminals staring down the camera. Such men left a lasting folk memory in Birmingham, which writer Steven Knight drew upon when he created Peaky Blinders. Contrary to the myth that grew in later decades, writes historian Andrew Davies for BBC History Magazine, gang members did not wear caps lined with razors. They wore ‘billycock’ or bowler-style hats, made of hard felt, with a rakish, curved rim, two-and-a-half inches wide. The brims of their hats would be moulded into a point and worn tilted over one eye. Read more | The real Peaky Blinders Peaky Blinders could also be distinguished by wearing extravagant flared trousers known as bell-bottoms, traditionally part of a naval uniform. Andrew Davies told the History Extra podcast how gang members would wear flares that were very wide, and also hob-nailed boots which would make “quite a racket” as they moved in large groups around the city. Peaky Blinders BBC drama – the real history behind the show Was there ever an attempt to assassinate Oswald Mosley? Peaky Blinders season 6 – what can we expect? Who were the real Billy Boys, the Glasgow gang in Peaky Blinders? Podcast: who were the real Peaky Blinders? They would also wear brightly coloured and patterned scarves. These were all features of a distinctive uniform which marked the young person wearing it as a gang member, Davies says. "Had a youth dressed as a peaky blinder made an appearance in Birmingham in the 1920s he would have been greeted with astonishment," writes Davies, "although middle-aged passers-by might have chuckled in recognition." It wasn’t just in Birmingham that image-conscious young men turned to gangland life, as this photograph below of a hooligan and friends in the capital from c1900 shows. For a recap of seasons 1–5 of Peaky Blinders, plus what to expect from the sixth and final season, click here…

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The real Peaky Blinders
type: item
date: 2019-08-08T08:35:59.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Peaky Blinders
subject: TV interest
description: At the end of the 19th century, the law-abiding citizens of Birmingham were terrorised by a new breed of gang member with two defining passions: natty streetwear and extreme violence. Andrew Davies reveals why so many young, working-class men were drawn to the brutal glamour of the peaky blinders
encoded: "Surely all respectable and law-abiding citizens are sick of the very name of ruffianism in Birmingham and assaults on police. No matter what part of the city one walks, gangs of 'peaky blinders' are to be seen, who ofttimes think nothing of grossly insulting passers by, be it a man, woman or child. I venture to say that 99 times out of 100, they are not even brought to justice." This anguished letter, signed "Workman", was published in the Birmingham Daily Mail on 21 July 1898. ‘Peaky blinders’ were easily recognised. Contrary to the myth that grew in later decades – and the BBC drama series – they did not wear caps lined with razors. In fact, they wore ‘billycock’ or bowler-style hats, made of hard felt, with a rakish, curved rim, two-and-a-half inches wide. They moulded the brims of their hats into a point, worn tilted over one eye – hence their nickname. They did not belong to a single gang. Quite the reverse: opposing gangs, all sharing this outlandish style, sought each other out on the streets of Birmingham and in late-night confrontations outside the city’s music halls. The term peaky blinder, adopted in the 1890s, was distinctive to Birmingham. In Manchester and neighbouring Salford, gang members were known as ‘scuttlers’. In London, they became known by the more enduring label ‘hooligan’. Read more | Peaky Blinders: The story so far, plus the real figures to expect in season 6 The frustration of ‘Workman’ was understandable. Three days earlier, Police Constable George Snipe had been fatally injured in a disturbance that shocked the city. PC Snipe and a fellow constable named Mead were patrolling a poor district to the north of the city centre between 9.30pm and 10pm when they ‘moved on’ a group of six or seven young ‘roughs’ who had gathered outside the Tram Stores pub in Hockley Hill. As one member of the group later admitted, the men had spent the day, a Sunday, on a spree, “drinking all the day, and fighting all the evening”. The constables followed the…

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Poldark, Peaky Blinders and 6 other historical TV shows that have tourists flocking to Britain
type: item
date: 2019-07-15T14:33:29.000Z
creator: Emma Mason
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: Downton Abbey
subject: Peaky Blinders
subject: Poldark
subject: The Crown
description: As the backdrop to Ross Poldark's shirtless shenanigans in the hit period drama Poldark, Cornwall has seen a huge influx of tourists looking to visit the show's scenic filming locations. In 2018, tourism chiefs warned that the BBC television drama is putting the county's coastline at risk of "over-tourism". As the fifth and final series of the drama begins, we take a closer look at 'Poldark effect' and the other shows bringing tourists to Britain…
encoded: The chief executive of Cornish tourist board Visit Cornwall says the area is struggling to cope with an unprecedented surge in holidaymakers, it was reported in 2018. Visitors were encouraged to look beyond popular Poldark filming locations Porthcurno beach and Kynance Cove, which feature as Poldark’s beloved Nampara. Poldark is reported to have influenced around 14 per cent of all visitors to Cornwall, and businesses have long reported a boost in the number of tourists from overseas because of the so-called ‘Poldark effect’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/05/13492300-low_res-poldark-s3_0-afbf2ae-91687ff.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Aidan Turner (as Poldark) and Eleanor Tomlinson (as Demelza) in the BBC period drama ‘Poldark’. (Photo by Mammoth Screen/BBC)" title="Aidan Turner (as Poldark) and Eleanor Tomlinson (as Demelza) in the BBC period drama ‘Poldark’. (Photo by Mammoth Screen/BBC)" /> Poldark is one of many drama series inspiring so-called ‘TV tourism’: in 2018, in its travel trends report, Trip Advisor found that 1 in 5 global travellers visited a location because they saw it on a TV show. Significantly, says Vogue magazine, “TV’s tourism influence is now rivalling that of film – perhaps even surpassing it”. A report from the University of North Texas found that “TV viewing behaviour is the strongest predictor of entertainment-motivated tourism… television series are often watched on regular basis thus, viewers are more likely to be exposed to the destination image for a longer period.” The real history behind Poldark's 18th-century London Poldark’s Cornwall: the history behind the hit series Top 10 historical Cornish words Set in 18th-century Cornwall, the hugely popular BBC One drama Poldark starring Aidan Turner (as Poldark) and Eleanor Tomlinson (as Demelza) draws inspiration from Winston Graham’s 12 novels, which were written between 1945 and 2002. Here, we look at seven other historical TV dramas that ar…

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Peaky Blinders: behind the scenes with creator Steven Knight
type: item
date: 2016-05-05T13:04:08.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Peaky Blinders
subject: TV interest
description: Peaky Blinders, the violent BBC drama of gangsters set in 1920s Birmingham, has won the award for Best Drama at the British Academy Television Awards 2018. Here we look back at our interview with the show's creator, Steven Knight, who in 2016 on the eve of series three told BBC History Magazine's TV editor, Jonathan Wright, about the real-life inspiration for the series and the historical research that underpins it...
encoded: Q: We left Tommy Shelby, not for the first time, in a bit of a pickle last time around. What’s the overarching story in series three? A: He’s always in a pickle! In this series, he and the other members of the family have a lot of money and they’re getting richer, but it’s not solving their latest problems. As Tommy tries to get legitimate, everybody is trying to escape where they came from in their different ways. Series three is a study in 'can they get away'? Can they escape from what seems to be their destiny? Q: That’s a classic gangster narrative, yet it’s not often told in relation to UK gangsters. Why don’t we tell these stories more often in Britain? A: It’s not just a British thing, it’s a European thing. The very first things that were written in America were on the assumption that this was paradise. Cotton Mather [Puritan minister and author, 1663– 1728] and the Puritans wrote believing they were in the promised land. Everything they saw was God’s work, and Europe was bad and old, so I think the narrative of America is that what happens here is worthy of mythology. This was an even greater influence on me than gangster films. [Think of] westerns, where they’re telling the story of 19th-century agricultural labourers, cowboys. These are people who were employed to herd cows from one place to another, and their story has become [part of] the mythology of the western world. Americans have done that to something mundane. In Europe, I believe, our mythologising was done with knights and chivalry. We don’t really do that anymore. I don’t believe [this is] the result of anything other than timidity on our part. The stories in Peaky Blinders are based on what was told to me when I was a kid, and they were stories of things that happened to my parents when they were kids. They saw all of that through children’s eyes, which makes everything more mythological – everything a bit darker, and brighter, and better. I was a kid when I heard the stories [secondhand] and …

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