My Peaky Blinder Uncle (English Edition)

Family legend was that an uncle, the wonderfully named Billy Beach, ‘got into trouble’ with a Birmingham gang, was ‘shot at’ and so ran away to join the circus and rode the ‘itchy mule’. But Billy didn’t just get into trouble with a gang – He led one as part of the infamous Garrison Lane Vendetta. He wasn’t just shot at – He was wounded several times and was just as likely to have been in Winson Green Prison than away with the circus. The other side of the vendetta was led by the Sheldon family who were the inspiration for the Shelbys in TV’s Peaky Blinders. Attempting to end the vendetta, Billy emigrated to Canada with Police Officers actually raising money towards his fare out of respect for the fact that the only weapons Billy had ever used were his fists. At the outbreak of WW1 he immediately volunteered and was wounded fighting with the Royal Canadian Highlanders at the 2nd Battle of Ypres. Back in the UK for treatment and then returning to Canada, trouble followed him around until peace finally broke out when he returned to his wife and children in Birmingham in 1925. A Peaky Blinder, a hard working metal worker, a gang leader, a family man, a fighter but not a thief, a wounded volunteer soldier, a character but perhaps not all bad. As well as tracing the history of Great Uncle Billy, the book also looks at the origins of the Sloggers and Peaky Blinders in Birmingham and at the activities of a number of real life characters featured in the Peak Blinders TV drama.

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