David France Collection


The David France Collection is a collection of football memorabilia, consisting of more than 10,000 items related to the birth and development of Everton Football Club in Liverpool, England.

Overview

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.
For health reasons, Dr France decided finally to part with his collection in 2002. 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.
In September 2007, the Everton Charitable Trust announced that it had secured a grant from the UK Heritage Lottery Fund to obtain the collection, and it was finally transferred from Dr France to the Trust on 31 December 2007. Following this transfer, it was also announced that Everton F.C. would donate their own collection of memorabilia, and that, collectively, it would be known as The Everton Collection.

Club ledgers

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.
The collection boasts an unbroken sequence of 29 volumes from 1886 through to 1964. Prepared and signed by famous club chairmen, including John Houlding, George Mahon, Will Cuff and Sir John Moores, the ledgers provide the most complete documentation of the development of a professional football club.
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.
However, the ledgers do not just deal with the club's players; they also include important decisions on the overall running of the club. Some of the most notable events recorded, from the early history of the club, in the ledgers include:
  • The founding of the Football League and the subsequent preparations for the inaugural season
  • The winning of the League Championship, as well as the awarding of the first ever League Championship medals
  • The buildup of the rent dispute and the departure from Anfield to Goodison Park, which subsequently led to the formation of Liverpool F.C.
  • The first FA Cup final to be hosted by a League club, as well as the annual selection of team colours – before Everton settled on royal blue shirts and white shorts in 1902
  • The first overseas tour by an English League club
  • The first FA Cup triumph by a Merseyside club
There are also more recent historical events:
  • Ground improvements to accommodate over 78,000 spectators at Goodison Park; the installation of state-of-the-art floodlights and under-soil heating and the elimination of the maximum wage for professional footballers.
  • The first participation of a Merseyside club in European competition, as well as initial preparations for five 1966 World Cup matches at Goodison Park, including one of the semi-finals.
Image:Everton gatebook.jpg|left|thumb|upright|A gatebook from a match versus Bradford City on 3 April 1909.

Financial annals

In 1895, the amount of cash taken at the turnstiles at Goodison Park seemed to be much lower than what was expected from the attendance predictions of the club's directors, and the local newspaper reporters. 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.
Following the implication and arrest of 15 employees, Everton introduced meticulously detailed gate books as well as new turnstile equipment.
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.

Programmes

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.
It is difficult to calculate the precise number of friendly matches Everton have been involved in during this time, however, experts have estimated that the collection features over 90% of all programmes involving Everton over this period, and is hailed as the most complete compilation of such archival material for any football club.
While the unbroken sequences of programmes is stunning, the actual condition of them is museum quality, with many in excellent condition considering their age.
The collection includes every Everton programme published in the inaugural 1888-9 League season. Another highlight is the 32 programmes from the pre-League era when Everton played at Anfield. The collection can also claim to include the earliest known programmes for a number of today's top clubs, including Manchester United, Celtic, Aston Villa, Derby County, West Bromwich Albion, Bolton Wanderers, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers.
It is also thought to contain the earliest home programmes for Southampton, Newcastle United, Walsall, Nottingham Forest, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, as well as numerous programmes from the early European tours undertaken by the club during the 1930s.
The earliest programme in the collection is from a match Everton played against Astley Bridge on 4 September 1886 at Anfield, with the earliest away programme being when a local team called Stanley entertained Everton on 21 January 1888.
The David France Collection can also claim that it is possibly the biggest collection of Liverpool programmes held privately as Everton and Liverpool produced a joint programme between 1904 and 1935 — nearly a thousand programmes.

Everton tickets

Season tickets

In the early days of the club, members had to pay an annual subscription and were provided with a season ticket as a result. The David France Collection includes a consecutive run of 11 such season tickets, dating from 1881 through to 1892.
The colours of the member's ticket reflect those of the shirts worn for that season, and not only include first-team and reserve fixture lists for the season, but also some of the club officers including presidents, vice-presidents, secretary, treasurer and the first-team captain.
The earliest season ticket in the collection is for the 1881–82 season allowing the member, and his accompanying lady, to attend games at Stanley Park.
There is also a season ticket for the 1883–84 season, which was the only season that Everton played at Priory Road, before the landlord, Mr James Pruitt, insisted that they move.
Other season tickets included in the collection are from the first season at Anfield, the inaugural League campaign and the first League Championship winning season.

Match tickets

Match tickets were never intended to be saved; however, recently ticket stubs have become one of the more collectible items of memorabilia.
The collection includes hundreds of Everton tickets, not only of Cup Finals and Semifinals, but also less important matches.
When Everton were based at Anfield, they used the local public house, The Sandon, as their base which was owned by the club's president at the time, John Houlding. When the building went through some renovation work in the mid-1990s, a box of old tickets were found. It is believed that a number of these are also included within the collection.
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.

Medals

The collection boasts a total of 40 medals awarded to Everton players in various competitions in their history – including a medal awarded for every major trophy won by the club, except the 1986–87 League Championship and the 1995 FA Cup.
The medals for major competitions won by the club include the first ever League Championship medal awarded to a number of players in 1890–91, as well as medals for the League Championship winning seasons of 1914–15, 1927–28, 1930–31, 1938–39, 1962–63 and 1984–85; the 1906, 1933, 1966 and 1984 FA Cup winners medals plus a 1985 European Cup Winners' Cup medal.
Other medals included within the collection are those awarded for the Wartime Northern League Championship, Division Two winners, FA Cup runners-up medals, Milk Cup runners-up plus a number of medals from minor competitions such as the Liverpool Senior Cup, the Lancashire Cup, Norfolk & Norwich Hospital Cup and the Blackpool Hospital Cup.
While almost all of the medals are gold, the collection includes a silver medal commemorating the 1924 victory over Newcastle United F.C. at the Nou Camp Stadium, when Everton won the Barcelona Cup.
While it is not a medal won with Everton, the collection includes Brian Labone's bronze medal which was awarded when England finished third in the 1968 European Championship.