Elizabeth "Polly" Shelby (1874-1929) was a British certified accountant who served as the matriarch of the Peaky Blinders and the treasurer of Shelby Company Limited.
Biography[]
Elizabeth Shelby was the sister of Arthur Shelby, Sr. and the daughter of Birdie Boswell, and she came from a Romani family. She would take care of her family in the woods while the police searched for her father, and she personally aborted her child when she was impregnated at the age of 16. She later married a river Gypsy and had two children, Michael Gray and Anna Gray.
Peaky Blinders[]
Shelby in 1919
Polly Shelby looked after her nephews Arthur, Tommy, John, and Finn and her niece Ada Shelby since they were young (she called their absentee father a "thieving whore-monger"), and, while her criminal nephews were serving in the British Army during World War I, she managed their Peaky Blinders gang. She remained the matriarch and heart of the family even after Arthur and Tommy returned to Birmingham, but, in 1922, she became withdrawn and depressed after a fortune teller told her that her daughter had died. She then allowed for herself to be raped by Major Chester Campbell in exchange for her son Michael's freedom, and she later murdered Campbell at Epsom. She went on to have an affair with the artist Ruben Oliver in 1924, but she was arrested that year for Campbell's murder, and she left the Peaky Blinders in 1925 after the King pardoned her. She was forced to return to the gang to protect her family from the Mafia boss Luca Changretta, and she secretly made a deal with Changretta by which she would sacrifice Tommy (whom she blamed for her imprisonment) in exchange for Changretta sparing her other nephews and niece. This turned out to be a trap, with Tommy ambushing and killing three of Changretta's men. Polly continued to support Tommy when he eliminated Changretta and during his struggles with mental illness.