A new historical drama, inspired by the lives of real people who lived in the East End of London in the 1880s, is set to blow audiences away.
Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, the release date for A Thousand Blows – starring Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Malachi Kirby – arrives this week.
While the show is a fictional drama, imagining what would have happened if bare-knuckle boxers fighting in an illegal ring interacted with an all-female gang, the characters’ stories are based on truth.
The drama came about thanks in part to fascination regarding the life of boxer Hezekiah Moscow, who was the subject of research conducted by Sarah Elizabeth Cox, a historical advisor on the programme.
Ahead of its launch, Metro asked Sarah about the research she uncovered for years before the TV series went into development about Hezekiah and several other Black boxers who fought in 19th-century London.
We also spoke to creator Steven and several members of the cast about how the programme came together, including how the real Forty Elephants crime syndicate informed the gripping plot.
While Hezekiah, Sugar Goodson (played by Stephen), the Queen of the Forty Elephants Mary Carr (Erin) and other characters featured in the series are named after people who really walked the streets of the capital at that time, changes were made to deliver the dramatised version of this story.
Is A Thousand Blows based on a true story?
A Thousand Blows blends together true history with fiction, imagining what would have happened if several historical figures rubbed shoulders in the 1880s.
Some, including Hezekiah, Sugar and Alec Munroe (played by Francis Lovehall in the show) did know each other – but their relationships were very different to the way they’re portrayed in the Disney Plus drama.
Sarah, who runs the fascinating historical blog Grappling With History, began writing about Hezekiah in 2019, having first started her research by looking into 19th-century fighter Jack Wannop. As far as she’s aware, she’s the only person to have written extensively about the former.
The historian, who works in PR by day, uncovered details about the lives of Hezekiah, Alec and other Black boxers who fought in London at that time. In 2022, historian Greg Jenner recommended her to a producer who was working on A Thousand Blows to provide expertise specifically on boxing in the 1880s in Victorian London.
She was one of four historical advisors on the programme, alongside Hallie Rubenhold, who was the expert on the portrayal of the all-female Forty Elephants gang; Diana Yeh, who informed on the history of the Chinese community in London at that time; and Professor Matthew Smith, a historian of Jamaican history.
Sarah, who was brought on as an advisor after her online blogs were discovered by the team behind the show, explained how there are certain things that are still unknown about Hezekiah, and then the writers ‘filled in those gaps’.
‘We don’t have the evidence for certain things, but they’ve done it in a way that is certainly really feasible, it makes sense,’ she said.
‘We know he was from the Caribbean. He’s referred to as being from the West Indies on the 1891 census, once or twice in newspapers as well. But there’s no evidence to show actually where he came from.’
In the show, Hezekiah and Alec are shown as two best friends who arrive in England together from Jamaica, but in real life they actually met in the UK.
‘We know that Alec Munroe was from Kingston, Jamaica. So even though they met in England, and Munroe was actually 12 or 13 years older, it makes sense that they were both Jamaican, they were really good friends when they came here,’ she stated.
From Sarah’s research, she found that Hezekiah was a cabin boy travelling the world by sea when he was 15 or 16 years old, before arriving in London when he was 19 or 20. Alec, on the other hand, was a mariner who competed in bare-fist prizefights.
In A Thousand Blows, Hezekiah’s motivation for coming to London is to become a lion tamer, but ‘we don’t think that was his actual motivation for coming here’, Sarah outlined.
Nonetheless, this would have been inspired by Hezekiah’s real career, as he did work at the East London aquarium as a bear, lion, hyena and wolf tamer.
Afterwards, Hezekiah became a ‘well-respected boxer’ in a career that spanned 10 years. However, the circumstances of his boxing career differed to the depiction on the small screen.
Not only did he apparently never partake in bare-knuckle boxing fights or reach champion level, but he and Sugar didn’t have a fiery rivalry – which is at the core of the show’s plot.
‘He never had any kind of rivalry, or he never fought Sugar Goodson,’ Sarah told us.
‘Sugar Goodson and Moscow would have known each other. They all boxed at the same pubs. There was a circle of boxers who all knew each other, but that rivalry is very much the creation of the show.’
In real life, Hezekiah went on to become a trainer in Watford, Nottingham and Leicester, and was a manager of boxing saloons in a couple of pubs.
What’s more, the ‘boxing fraternity’ in East and South London was ‘really friendly’ in real life.
‘Everyone supported everyone. They were described as brother pugs, brother pugilists. It was a really supportive club of blokes who lived in a hard time and had hard lives and often very tragic lives, and then they came together in these boxing clubs at night,’ the historian stated.
‘The show’s interpretation of the boxing world at this point is very mean and vicious. You’ve got this intense rivalry between people, and that makes great TV. I don’t think it would have been the same kind of show, and it wouldn’t be as great to watch if it had really been an accurate interpretation.’
Sarah continued: ‘I’m not saying that these kinds of rivalries didn’t exist. They definitely do. There were certainly rivalries, but it feels a lot more good natured in real life.’
What you need to know about A Thousand Blows
When is A Thousand Blows released?
A Thousand Blows is set to premiere on Friday February 21 on Disney Plus, with all six episodes being released on the streaming platform at once.
Who’s in the cast?
A Thousand Blows centres around three main characters: Hezekiah Moscow, Sugar Goodson and Mary Carr.
Boxer Hezekiah Moscow is played by Malachi Kirby, 35, who previously starred in Black Mirror, the remake of Roots and delivered a Bafta-winning performance in Small Axe: Mangrove.
Hezekiah finds himself wrapped up in the world of all-female gang the Forty Elephants, led by their queen, Erin Doherty, 32.
The actress made a scene-stealing turn as the young Princess Anne in third and fourth seasons of The Crown, while also blowing audiences away in the BBC drama Chloe.
Stephen Graham, who plays veteran boxer Sugar Goodson in the series and is an executive producer, has become known for his ‘tough guy’ roles over the years, starring in This Is England, Gangs of New York and Boiling Point to name a few.
Other cast members in the series include Francis Lovehall as Alec Munroe, James Nelson-Joyce as Treacle Goodson, Jason Tobin as Lao, Darci Shaw as Alice Diamond and Morgan Hilaire as Esme Long.
Will there be a season 2?
Ahead of the release of A Thousand Blows, season two has already been confirmed by creator Steven Knight.
While speaking at a Q&A, the screenwriter was asked about the prospect of a second outing, to which he responded: ‘I can’t give a lot away but it’s more of the same, expect the unexpected but the stakes are higher.
‘But we do have the second series in the can and we all want to keep this story going and I think we will and just take it towards the 21st Century.’
When she first came across Hezekiah in her research, Sarah found that he was also referred to by the name ‘Ching Hook’, learning that he was described as a Black Chinese man when he first started boxing in 1882.
The advisor outlined how at the time of Hezekiah’s birth, there were Chinese people in the Caribbean, so there is a chance that he could have had one Chinese parent and one Black parent. In A Thousand Blows, the character is revealed to have had a Chinese grandparent.
While speaking to Metro, the creator of the drama Steven explained how star and executive producer Stephen approached him with the idea of telling Hezekiah’s story, saying: ‘I did some research and found out that the story was quite extraordinary and absolutely worth telling.’
Stephen told us how the ‘beautiful photograph’ of the real Hezekiah was a blueprint for the programme, while Malachi added: ‘I can’t tell you how many times I looked at it, just trying to figure out who this man was.
‘It is mesmerising. In the picture, it’s like, what was going on? He doesn’t give away much in his eyes, but it was just trying to decipher, what are you? Why are you? What do you sound like? What are you feeling like? What’s your heart?’
While Peaky Blinders and Taboo star Stephen has a similar physical stature to Sugar Goodson, ‘he was a very different character to the one [the actor] plays,’ Sarah said.
‘I love the menace and the violence of him, but yet, Goodson would have been a very different kind of person in real life,’ she stated. ‘He was certainly a bit of a troublemaker, he was certainly in trouble with the law quite often. He was certainly a bare-knuckle boxer for part of his career. But there’s quite a lot of difference there.’
One aspect of the programme that Sarah felt looked exactly as she imagined was the Blue Coat Boy pub, where the bare-knuckle boxing fights take place.
‘We know that in real life, it was on Dorset Street, which is where Spitalfields market is today. It was described as the worst street in London. This is like the Jack the Ripper streets. It was just this den of criminality,’ she shared.
‘We don’t know what the Blue Coat Boy actually looked like, but there are small descriptions of it. I helped advise the set designers, and the way that they’ve interpreted it and built it in this shape is just perfect. It’s exactly how I imagine it is.’
The historian continued: ‘The atmosphere of it, where there’s lots of women in the audience, there’s men, it’s very working class, it’s kind of raucous. It’s attached to a pub, so everyone’s drinking. You’ve got the character of Punch Lewis, who’s played by Daniel Mays, and he was a real man drumming up excitement. It’s sweaty, and you can smell the atmosphere in there. That, for me, is very much how I imagine some of those boxing shows would have been like, quite frenzied.
‘It was just escapism. These people have horrible lives a lot of the time. I love the way that they’ve done that.’
As well as Hezekiah and Sugar, the Forty Elephants – also known as the Forty Thieves – were a real female gang that operated in London from the late 19th century up until the 1950s who specialised in shoplifting.
Brian McDonald, the author of the book Gangs of London, told The Guardian in 2010 how the gang would carry out raids in shops, stating: ‘The girls benefited from prudish attitudes of the time by taking shelter behind the privacy afforded to women in large stores.’
That much is also true in the show – and we can’t wait to see how their exploits continue to unfold in the second season.
Erin told Metro how she relished in depicting the violence of this environment from a female perspective, explaining how it was ‘so interwined in the world’.
‘It felt completely necessary that this woman would be swept up in that way of expressing yourself as well. That was why I fell in love with her,’ the actress shared.
A Thousand Blows premieres on Friday February 21 on Disney Plus.
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