Gangs of England: The Real Peaky Blinders and the Racecourse Wars

The Underworld Podcast

Documentary, True Crime, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 871 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On the smog-filled streets of industrial Birmingham, groups of ‘Peaky Blinders’ earned a reputation as Britain’s most feared gang, terrorizing anybody who stepped in their paths with bats, blades and whatever else they could get their hands on. They ruled the UK’s second city until the turn of the century. Led by Anglo-Irish prizefighter Billy Kimber, what followed them was even more fearsome. The ‘Brummagems’ forged alliances with London crews, robbed the rich and ran Britain’s ultra-lucrative horse racing courses. They couldn’t hold the throne for long. Italian Londoners and a long-suffering Jewish bookmaker helped launch the ‘Racecourse Wars’ of the 1920s, pitting brutalized World War I veterans against each other in mob clashes the likes of which the country had never before seen. Decades later Kimber and his Birmingham boys would be immortalized in the hit TV show Peaky Blinders. But the truth may just be stranger than the fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:08.0	UK.
1:10.0	June 1921 in the British town of Epsom, it's Derby Day, one of the biggest fixtures on the World Horse Racing calendar and tens of thousands of people are packed into the course's stands, among them surrounded by
1:25.9	whole king-minded and goons are the bookies, screaming odds into the crowd and taking millions
1:31.3	in gambling cash. This is one of Britain's most lucrative industries,
1:35.3	and it's Benton of the 9 Bob note. Suddenly, there's a commotion. Dozens of flat cap-wearing gangsters are striding up and down the lanes of bookies,
1:45.0	threatening a few of them from the northern city of Leeds, shaking them down for a few coins.
1:50.0	These are the Bromogen boys, from Britain's second city of Birmingham, feared for their
1:55.6	street thuggery and prize-fighting skills.
	...

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