Is A Thousand Blows based on a true story?

But when their stories overlap, that's when the real magic of the series – which has been created by Peaky Blinders' Steven Knight – comes into its own. As per the synopsis: "As Hezekiah finds fortune and fame through the art of pugilism, he attracts the attention of the infamous Queen of the Forty Elephants, Mary Carr, who sets about exploiting his talents to further her criminal enterprise.

"Meanwhile, the menacing and self-declared emperor of the East End boxing world, Sugar Goodson, determines to destroy Hezekiah whose ambitions to fight in the West End threaten everything he has built. What ensues is a battle of the old world against the new."

One of the major focal points of the series is the Forty Elephants, the notorious all-female gang that ruled London at the time. It's a part of history that the series "never glorifies", according to series star and executive producer Hannah Walters.

"Ultimately, they’re just doing it get by, it’s a means to an end. They’re not living in luxurious houses and living these incredible lives, they’re just living life."

But is A Thousand Blows based on a true story? Read on to find out more about the inspiration behind the Disney Plus drama.

Is A Thousand Blows based on a true story?

No – according to the official synopsis for A Thousand Blows, the series is simply "inspired by the true life stories of a group of characters battling for survival in the brutal East End of London in the 1880s."

As with any historical drama, there are of course a whole series of reimagined instances and events but in terms of characters, plenty of the faces you see in A Thousand Blows are inspired by their real-life counterparts.

For instance, Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), Mary Carr (Erin Doherty) and Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) are all inspired by the real-life boxers and the Queen of the Forty Elephants.

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com about the history behind the series and whether they were aware of it before embarking on the project, Doherty said: “Not a clue. That’s why it’s so special I think for all of us.

"None of these stories had been told or explored in any way so it just felt like a huge gift and privilege to be doing it and to now, have it made and offering it out to other people is so special as well. It was such a gorgeous experience for me, individually to go on that journey. This feels like another stage of the gloriousness of the whole thing.”

As Doherty says, it's a history that hasn't been depicted on the screen before but the story of the Forty Elephants is one that creator Steven Knight had been wanting to work on for some time.

Chatting exclusively to RadioTimes.com, Knight said: “I’ve wanted to do the Forty Elephants story for so long because it’s just an incredibly compelling story that has so much resonance with modern times. There were always 40 of them, they were all women, they had a Queen who was their leader and they made a living out of robbery, cons, tricks and all kinds of deceptions. I just thought, why has nobody done this? Why has nobody put this on the screen?

"I was then approached by Stephen [Graham] and Hannah [Walters] with the idea of the true story of somebody called Hezekiah Moscow, who was a Jamaican boxer who actually came to London with his friend to become a lion tamer. I just felt that, because it took place in the 1880s in London, that was an opportunity to tell that fantastic story of hardship and triumph and marry that with the story of the Forty Elephants and put those two things together.”

In terms of how the series came about, it was husband and wife duo Stephen Graham and Hannah Walters who had first come across Hezekiah Moscow, with Walters being sent a photograph of the boxer.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com about it, Walters said: "I was just like, ‘Wow, this gentleman is incredible’ and then, what is his story? We had a tiny bit of research about him wanting to come to England to kind of better his future, find a different way of life to Jamaica – that was all we had.

"We decided to delve a little deeper and when we delved a little deeper, in the research, we found the Forty Elephants kept popping up, the Goodson brothers kept popping up. So we thought, why not bring all of these strands together to create an incredible tapestry and world."

Similarly, Stephen Graham also told RadioTimes.com that the "beautiful photograph" in question was one where Hezekiah "looked so regal, just so full of humility and dignity".

Graham also said that along with the photograph, there were also "two paragraphs about Sugar and Treacle", the well-known boxing brothers of the time that Graham and Nelson-Joyce's characters are based on.

Was Hezekiah Moscow a real person?

Yes, Hezekiah Moscow was a real person.

Although the character we see in A Thousand Blows is simply inspired by the real-life figure, Hezekiah was indeed a boxer but records show that he was in fact a lion tamer and performer with the East London Aquarium in 1884.

We do know that at the time, Hezekiah was charged by the RSPCA for “cruelly ill-treating” four bears in his care, so it looks as though he did have a career as a performer, as well as a boxer.

In terms of his boxing, records confirm that Hezekiah would fight under the pseudonym of "Ching Ghook" or "Ching Hook", with the racist undertones of his nickname possibly denoting his mixed Jamaican and Chinese heritage, which is referenced in A Thousand Blows.

Unfortunately, not much is known about Hezekiah, with his story reflecting many African and Caribbean people's at the time.

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, historian and A Thousand Blows executive producer David Olusoga said: "In some ways, Hezekiah’s typical of the sorts of figures that emerge into the British historical records, who've come from the Caribbean or Africa. Because it's a fractured biography.

"We have flashes where we can hear so much about them and then big questions, we know nothing about him. He disappears.

"We know he got married, so we can hear reports of him, see reports in the newspapers of the fights and then nothing. So, the nature of Black British history is we have these flashes of detail.

"We meet these people, we get some sense of who they are and then there’s silence. And that's where drama is kind of incredibly powerful because drama can imaginatively fill the gaps. We will never know, I suspect, much more about Hezekiah. But drama can do something different."

Were the Forty Elephants real?

Yes, the Forty Elephants were a real criminal gang.

However, timelines have been overlapped a bit more for the sake of the series and stories. In reality, the Forty Elephants Queen Mary Carr was born in 1862 but is the leader of the gang in the series, which takes place in the 1880s.

Olusoga told RadioTimes.com: "Mary's slightly brought from a later period into our period, she’s one of the kind of great characters of criminal London." The fact that more is known of her is simply because she was a criminal so there are historical documents from hearings and the courts that prove her existence.

"Here is a woman that we know about. If she had done what society wanted to do – be a domestic servant until her early 20s and then get married, have children and shut up – we'd know nothing about it. We know about it because she said to hell with that," Olusoga said.

Speaking about the history of the Forty Elephants, Hallie Rubenhold – another historical advisor on the series – said in a press pack for A Thousand Blows: "There’s a lot of mystery about where the Forty Elephants actually came from.

"Some people have suggested that they were around as early as the 18th century, but we know their existence starts appearing in print in the 1870s, and Mary Carr is mentioned as being the queen of the Forty Elephants, or sometimes they were called the Forty Thieves as well.

"The Forty Elephants got their name from a pub in Lambeth called the Elephant and Castle. Because of the pub, that name was also the name of the area. The women themselves coalesced into this gang of thieves. A lot of them were married or were part of a family that belonged to a group of male thieves, called the Elephants. And so this was the female arm to that. People talk about family values and they forget that family values also involve criminal activity, because most of these women were part of criminal families."

Rubenhold continued: "The interesting thing about the Forty Elephants is, unlike male gangs, they didn't necessarily use violence to get what they wanted. They used their minds. They were pickpockets. They would shoplift and they would use distraction techniques. They’d use their gender as a way in which to acquire what they wanted.

"For example, while one of the gang distracted a shop keeper or member of the public, another of them wearing a dress which was specifically fitted out with very large pockets, would be sticking bits of merchandise into this compartmented dress or coat. People expected certain things of women. They expected women to be much more honest and to be demure.

"Often these shops wouldn't even know that they had been the victim of a hoist, as they were called, or a heist, until afterwards, because these two nice ladies had come in and then left with various bits of jewellery or bits of fur or gloves or things like that. So they were very, very clever in how they enacted these heists. And that made them quite unique in that way."

Rubenhold also adds: "Another thing the Forty Elephants did was ingratiate themselves with people and be able to get close to men and blackmail them. This was something they did on a regular basis. Another thing they did was to get themselves employed as maids in wealthy households.

"They were able to find out secrets in those households and then blackmail the people concerned. So they were very clever. There were also very territorial. There were repercussions for anyone encroaching on their patch. So they may not have used violence in their crimes, but they could be quite violent."

We do also know that Alice Diamond, who is played by Darci Shaw, is inspired by the real life woman who would go on to become Mary's successor as Queen of the Forty Elephants.

While we meet Alice as she's struggling to be accepted into the group, there's no saying where her story could go but in his book, Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants : The Female Gang That Terrorised London, Brian McDonald states that it was Alice who "led the Elephants to their greatest infamy."

However, despite showcasing their quick-thinking and intelligence, Hannah Walters admits that the series doesn't glorify the actions of the Forty Elephants.

Chatting exclusively to RadioTimes.com, Walters said: "There were conversations about other characters but specifically for the Forty Elephants, I think we never glorify the crime that they commit."

She went on: "There weren’t many opportunities for working class women at that time, it was – let’s be honest – it was the whore house or the work house.

"So, for these women, they chose a different path. Actually, that’s quite inspiring that they decided to do that and put themselves at risk on a daily basis of being put in prison, being hung. It was tough times. They just decided to toughen up and go against the system, there’s something inspiring about that.”

A Thousand Blows is available to stream on Disney Plus now. You can sign up to Disney Plus from £4.99 a month now.

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