Members wore signature outfits that typically included tailored jackets, lapelled overcoats, buttoned waistcoats, silk scarves, bell-bottom trousers, leather boots, and flat caps.

[2] The Blinders' dominance came about from beating rivals, including the "Sloggers", "a pugilistic term for someone who could strike a heavy blow in the ring",[3] whom they fought for territory in Birmingham and its surrounding districts.

[6][7] The folk etymology of Peaky Blinder is that the gang members would stitch disposable razor blades into the peaks of their flat caps, which could then be used as weapons.

However, as the Gillette company introduced the first replaceable safety razor system in 1903, in the United States, and the first factory manufacturing them in Great Britain opened in 1908, this idea of the origin of the name is apocryphal.

When the police started to crack down on these activities due to pressure from the upper classes, the youth fought back, banding together in what became known as slogging gangs.

[14] This article is the earliest evidence of the Peaky Blinders in print: A serious assault was committed upon a young man named George Eastwood.

It seems that Eastwood, who has been for some time a total abstainer, called between ten and eleven o'clock at the Rainbow Public House in Adderly Street, and was supplied with a bottle of gingerbeer.

Shortly afterwards several men known as the "Peaky Blinders" gang, whom Eastwood knew by sight from their living in the same neighborhood as himself, came in.After some gangsters attacked a man in 1890, they sent a letter to various national newspapers declaring themselves as members of this specific group.

[9][16] Historian Heather Shor of the University of Leeds claims that the Blinders were more focused on street fighting, robbery, and protection rackets, as opposed to more organised crime.

[citation needed] Other prominent members of the gang were David Taylor, Earnest Haynes, Harry Fowles, and Stephen McNickle.

West Midlands police records described the three arrested as "foul-mouthed young men who stalk the streets in drunken groups, insulting and mugging passers-by".

Henry Lightfoot, the first person to be named as a Peaky Blinder, joined the British Army three times in his life and participated in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

[18] In addition to guns, the Peaky Blinders used an assortment of melee weapons, such as belt buckles, metal-tipped boots, fire irons, canes, and knives.

[26] Firearms such as Webley revolvers were used, such as in the shooting and killing of a Summer Hill gang member by Peaky Blinder William Lacey in September 1905.

[8][10] The BBC television drama series Peaky Blinders, starring Cillian Murphy, Paul Anderson, Sam Neill and Helen McCrory, premiered in September 2013.