"Why Birmingham's Slogging Gangs Were More Than Just Criminals"
Despite their criminal activities, Birmingham's slogging gangs were a product of their time and place. In this blog post, we explore the socio-economic factors that led to the rise of gang culture in the city and why it still resonates today. We will also offer other suggestions if you are visiting the city and surrounding area and would like to know more about the lives of the people who lived in the city at the time of the slogging gangs.
Our owner and main guide, Edward, has his roots firmly planted in the streets of Birmingham. His great-grandmother Marie Rose was born on Summer Lane, just a few doors down from Billy Kimber. Her mother had the Summer Lane Draper's shop, and her father worked, like many men in this area, in the Brassworks. It was a tough life with overcrowded housing, poor sanitation and dangerous working conditions. When Marie was only a year old, her father died of pneumonia, a common cause of death in these difficult times.
Life was tough not only for Edward's family but also for all the working class in the city. The heavy industry was not also dangerous for the men working in the metal works but also for the people breathing in the pollution that the furnaces pumped out. Any open spaces in the city were infilled with cramped cheap back-to-back housing for those swarming into the city in search of work. Squalid slums stretched from the present site of New Street Station to Snow Hill and down into Digbeth and Deritend. During the 19th century, the population of Birmingham rose from 73.670 to 744,973. J Cummings Walters of the Birmingham daily gazette described the conditions these working men and women had to endure.
"The air is heavy with a sooty smoke and with acid vapours, and here it is that the poor live - and wither away and die. How do they live? Look at the houses, the alleys, the courts, the ill-lit, ill-paved, walled-in squares, with last night's rain still trickling down from the roofs and making pools in the ill-sluiced yards.
Look at the begrimed windows, the broken glass, the apertures stopped with yellow paper or filthy rags; glance in at the rooms where large families eat and sleep every day and every night, amid rags and vermin, within dank and mildewed walls from which the blistered paper is drooping, or the bit of discolouration called 'paint' is peeling away.
Here you can veritably taste the pestilential air, stagnant and mephitic, which finds no outlet in the prison-like houses of the courts; and yet here, where there is breathing space for so few, the many are herded together, and overcrowding is the rule, not the exception. The poor have nowhere else to go."
Unsurprisingly, these conditions led to unrest and disillusioned youth who turned to violence as an outlet for their distress and a way to quell their boredom. Moreover, these conditions led to the slogging gangs as young men formed gangs with either those in their street and surrounding streets or those in the same industry. These gangs gave them some level of security as they would protect one another, and strong bonds formed between the gang members.
If you want to see what it was like to live in the city at this time, there are three museums that we highly recommend.
Back-to-Back Houses
At 55-63 Hurst Street and 50-54 Inge Street, you will find a little bit of the old Birmingham and be transported back into the kind of home that a Peaky Blinders would have lived in. As you step back in time on a guided tour of Birmingham's last surviving court of back-to-backs, houses built literally back-to-back around a communal courtyard, you will see how these homes would have been starting in the 1840s. The hour-and-a-half tour shows you the living conditions of the real people who lived and often worked in these homes, be it George Saunders' Tailor's shop or Mr Levi's bedroom, which also acted as his workshop.
Website: nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/birmingham-west-midlands/birmingham-back-to-backs
West Midlands Police Museum
Although we pass by the West Midlands Police Museum when we do our daytime walking tour, time does not allow us to go inside. It is, however, well worth a visit.
The Grade II listed Lock-up is located on Steelhouse Lane and opened in 1891, operating until 2016. Many a Peaky Blinder arrived at the doors of the Lock-up, typically transported there in the Prison Van. They would spend less than 24 hours there before being taken through a tunnel that goes under Colebridge Passage and into the courthouse. This passage allowed prisoners to be sent to the courts directly from the cells. The museum will enable you to see the cells and have many items connected to policing in the city. They also do regular events and talks, which are well worth the average of £15 the cost to attend. We would recommend that you purchase your ticket online before visiting the museum.
Website: museum.west-midlands.police.uk
Black Country Museum
Did you know that much of the Peaky Blinders TV series was filmed at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley? Their Chain Making Shop, Rolling Mill and canals all played vital roles in the filming of the show. This living museum allows you to walk around and see the back alleys and The Workers Institute, where many key scenes from the series were filmed in the dimly lit, smoky rooms enhanced by CGI. In addition, many of the canal scenes were filmed at the museum, and you can take a trip on a canal boat and see what it was like to float through the darkly lit tunnels.
The museum also has a coal mine where visitors can descend into the dark depths of the mine. As you wait for your turn to go into the mine, look out for a poster which tells of "Another horrible, most horrible mine disaster where 19 men and boys were roasted to death in an instant of time. In this mine accident, our very own Edward Shelby, the owner and main guide, lost his five times great grandad John Windmill. John's pregnant daughter Sarah lost not only her father but also her husband, Joseph Boden. To make ends meet following the disaster, she took in a lodger Lewis Unitt who she then married, and together they had a daughter Betsey who is Edward's three-times great-grandmother.
This immersive museum gives you a real feel for living in the Midlands during the Industrial Revolution. We recommend you allow a whole day to visit this museum.
Website: bclm.com
