Peaky Blinders: How the real Jessie Eden inspired working women
Socialist activist Jessie Eden was memorably portrayed by actress Charlie Murphy in hit crime drama Peaky Blinders. However, is it an accurate depiction?
Image: Katie Eden was portrayed by Charlie Murphy in the hit drama Peaky Blinders | TCD/Prod.DB / Alamy Stock Photo
The crime drama Peaky Blinders has cemented itself as a pop-culture juggernaut since it first started airing in 2013. Set in interwar Birmingham, it follows fictional gangster Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy) as he pursues various illicit escapades.
Key to the series’ appeal is how it seamlessly weaves its made-up elements with historical fact. For example, in the fourth season, we see Shelby run into Jessie Eden, a real-life campaigner for women’s workplace rights in the 1920s.
In our docuseries Original Gangsters With Sean Bean, we at Sky HISTORY shine a light on the real Peaky Blinders. It’s surprising how much these turn-of-the-century ‘sluggers’ differed from their fictionalised namesakes. So, can the same be said of Jessie Eden?
Jessie Eden’s early life
In Peaky Blinders, Shelby is seen meeting Jessie Eden, a young woman (played by Charlie Murphy), for the first time in the mid-1920s. The real Eden was born as Jessie Shrimpton on 24th February 1902 in Birmingham.
In 1923, Jessie, then in her early twenties, got married to a man called Albert Eden. She consequently became Jessie Eden, which remains her most famous name. Nonetheless, her romance with Albert was short-lived, and she later branded it a 'folly', as her husband had not shared her political views.
Those views were definitely on the more socialist side. By the time of the UK general strike in 1926, she was working at Birmingham’s Joseph Lucas motor factory. Many of her co-workers had already unionised, but she persuaded them to also join the strike.
The 1926 UK general strike
The strike took place in May 1926, with female employees demanding better remuneration and working conditions. This episode of history is recreated in Peaky Blinders, but Eden shared her own memories of the real-life event 50 years after it occurred.
She recalled to the Birmingham Post in 1976: ‘One policeman put his hands on my arms. They were telling me to go home, but the crowd howled, “Hey, leave her alone” and some men came and pushed the policemen away.’
She added: ‘They didn’t do anything after that. I think they could see there would have been a riot. I was never frightened of the police or the troops because I had the people with me, you see.’
A bizarre liaison in Peaky Blinders
Some light spoilers for Peaky Blinders follow, so if you’re new to the drama series and still catching up, you have been warned!
In series four, Jessie leads a trade union representing female workers at one of Shelby’s factories. Jessie meets up with Shelby in the hope of persuading him to grant these women fair pay.
These negotiations are the kind the real Jessie would have made in her role as a union steward. However, Peaky Blinders’ portrayal of her relationship with Shelby is rather sexed up (literally).
Jessie ends up falling in love with Shelby, so much so that she lets slip the names of fellow communist sympathisers active in Birmingham. The real Jessie joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, the CPGB, while leading 10,000 women out on another strike in 1931.
Unfortunately for the fictionalised Jessie, Shelby’s supposed romantic feelings for her start to look less than genuine. He hands the communists’ identifying details over to MPs, helping them to extinguish the political threat posed by the strike.
Jessie Eden’s (actual) love life
Trade union leader Graham Stevenson, who knew Jessie Eden personally prior to her death in 1986, has criticised her depiction in Peaky Blinders. He ridiculed the idea that a man like Shelby ‘could ever convince a woman like Eden to be wined and dined, let alone be seduced’.
Given Jessie’s tussles with the capitalist-minded corporate world, it seems unlikely that she would have become romantically involved with a factory owner. Indeed, there is no evidence that she actually did. Instead, she married fellow CPGB member Walter McCulloch in 1948.
Jessie Eden’s legacy as an activist
Jessie Eden disappeared from Peaky Blinders after its fifth season, but the real Jessie remained a prominent local activist for decades.
In 1939, she organised a rent strike on behalf of nearly 50,000 tenants disgruntled about the slum-like conditions of Birmingham housing. In the late 1960s, she protested against the Vietnam War.
Jessie’s activities have been credited with spurring more and more Midlands women to fight for their workplace rights. It’s a legacy that Peaky Blinders certainly doesn’t do justice.
Has Jessie Eden’s life story left you keen to learn more about the history of the socialist movement? To be notified about documentaries heading your way, sign up to the Sky HISTORY newsletter.
