Gangs of Birmingham

In 1872, the boom-town of Birmingham, known as the `workshop of the world', erupted in a series of gang wars. Mobs of youths, armed with stones, heavy-buckled belts and knives, fought pitched battles on the streets in a desperate struggle for territorial supremacy. The `sloggers' were the hooligans of their day, and for 30 years they held the streets in a grip of fear. Gooderson traces the gangs' emergence in Cheapside around 1870, through the Bordesely Riot of 1874 to the brutal antics of the Simpson brothers of Aston and the cop-killer George 'Cloggy' Williams.