David France Collection
Dr David France took over 25 years to assemble the collection from his home in the United States and includes rare programmes, season tickets, match tickets, medals, photographs, player contracts, cash books, handbooks, financial statements and other ephemera dating back to the 1880s, as well as the official club ledgers detailing the minutes of all board meetings between 1886 and 1964.
Despite receiving numerous offers from private investors, his dream was to make the collection available to what he called The Everton Family, and sought to transfer his world-class archives to an independent Charitable Trust, at a heavily discounted price.
[2] Often referred to as The Everton Scriptures, and sometimes as The DNA of Everton, the official club ledgers chronicle the minutes of the weekly scheduled and emergency meetings of the early Management Committee, and latterly the Board of Directors, and provide details of the decisions of the Directors at over 5,000 meetings recorded in over 10,000 handwritten pages.
Also, because Everton were one of the last professional clubs to appoint a manager, the Directors were responsible for all scouting appraisals, transfer negotiations and team selections during the first six decades, as well as documenting details of players’ wages, bonuses and benefits.
The ledgers provide these details on a number of stars from the club's history, including Nick Ross, Jack Southworth, Bert Freeman, Dixie Dean, Warney Cresswell, Cliff Britton, Joe Mercer, Tommy Lawton and Alex Young.
At the home match against Sunderland that year, the turnstiles were double-checked prior to kick off and were found to have been tampered with, ensuring that Everton had been defrauded of approximately 15% of the gate money actually taken.
The collection includes two of these gate books, detailing receipts for each individual turnstile for every match played at Goodison Park from 1907 to 1911 and 1916 to 1921.
Each home fixture has a single page dedicated to it and every entry is signed by the turnstile operator and then verified by a club director.
The collection also includes two cash books, from 1892 to 1894 and from 1897 to 1900, providing details of all expenditure following the move to Goodison Park and the initial construction work there.
The David France Collection contains over 6,000 programmes covering Everton participation, both home and away, in league games, cup competitions, friendlies and reserve-team fixtures between 1886 and 2002.
The collection can also claim to include the earliest known programmes for a number of today's top clubs, including Manchester United (then known as Newton Heath), Celtic, Aston Villa, Derby County, West Bromwich Albion, Bolton Wanderers, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers.
In the early days of the club, members (including the players) had to pay an annual subscription and were provided with a season ticket as a result.
The earliest match ticket is from a game played on 1 May 1890, between Everton and Notts County at Anfield in aid of the Hospital Saturday Fund.
It was taken on the bowling green of the Sandon Hotel (the club's headquarters at the time) and is the only known photograph of the Everton team wearing their infamous ruby shirts with blue trim.
The sepia-toned photograph featured the diminutive Fred Geary sandwiched between the 1891 League championship trophy and the Liverpool Cup.
The candid snaps that weren't used in publications were usually discarded from the newspaper libraries and photographic studios, but do provide a social commentary on the lifestyles and fashions of professional footballers between 1925 and 1975.
Other examples include candid shots of the team on the coach which took them to Speke Airport en route to an FA Cup fifth round tie at Roker Park in 1964, while another shows Ray Wilson, Alex Young, Sandy Brown and Derek Temple sitting in their first-class carriage at Lime Street station prior to their leaving for the 1966 FA Cup Final.
The morning session consisted of a long walk along Queen's Drive, through West Derby village, and then along the East Lancs Road and Walton Hall Avenue to Goodison Park.
Everton Football Club supporters like to sing about their illustrious history, therefore it is not surprising that they have fully embraced The David France Collection.
The official ledgers, rare programmes, unique season-tickets and magnificent medals are of interest to football enthusiasts of all ages and all persuasions.
And David Stoker of Liverpool Records Office stated: The ledgers and programmes are of significant historical importance.
