The name for the show has to come from somewhere.
The BBC show Peaky Blinders starring Cillian Murphy about the criminal Shelby family after World War I in Birmingham, has had people looking into the history behind the series since it began back in 2013.
The show follows ring leader Tommy Shelby, played by Murphy, along with his brothers Arthur played by Paul Anderson and John played by Joe Cole, chronicle the men of the Peaky Blinders gang.
It finally returns for its sixth – and final – season tonight, with many fans excited to see what will become of the Shelby’s and the Peaky Blinders (or what’s left of them anyway).
But what does ‘Peaky Blinders’ mean, and where did the name come from?
What does Peaky Blinders mean?
The Peaky Blinders were a criminal youth gang from Birmingham, England, active during the late 19th to earlier 20th century.
The name was derived from the weapons the group made and used.
They would stitch razor blades to the inside of their flat caps.
While the Shelby family are fictional, the gang itself was very real, featuring legitimate crooks such as David Taylor, “baby-faced” Harry Fowles, Ernest Haynes, and Stephen McNickle
From the weapons to the costumes, the show is true to the roots of the story and the grit of the gang comes through.
Flat caps were commonly called ‘peakys’ at the time and when the person wearing a flat cap equipped with razor blades headbutted someone in a fight it would cause the victim temporary blindness.
In the TV series you can see this first hand, when Tommy Shelby and his gang fight they whip off their caps and use the blades to cause series damage to their victim’s face.
The Peaky Blinders had a distinctive clothing style of peaked caps, cravats, bell-bottom trousers and a jacket with brass buttons.