Remembering Bernard Murphy and Henry Scotton

20 years ago today Bernard Murphy set off from his home in Huyton on Merseyside to watch his beloved Everton play at the Walkers Stadium in Leicester. But he never made it to the game. 

As reported in the Liverpool Echo:

Murphy, 40, was walking along Leicester's Upperton Road with his friend Mick Matthews and Mick's 12-year-old son when when a large timber hoarding, caught by gusting winds of 75mph, struck him in the face. The accident happened at around 2.20pm. He died of his head injuries minutes before the fixture against Leicester began.

Leicester manager Micky Adams traveled up to Liverpool for the funeral the following week, and there were so many people at St. Aloysius Church that he couldn't get in. Some time later, a memorial plaque was placed in the garden of rest at the Walkers Stadium. Two of his fellow Everton fans are seen here at the site:

If you look closely you can see the tribute to Bernard "Yifter" Murphy. When he was younger, he was a flying winger in his local football team, and was given the nickname 'Yifter' after the Ethiopian runner who won two gold medals at the Moscow Olympics in 1980. That was Miruts Yifter,  known as 'Yifter the Shifter'. 

Henry Scotton

Equally shocking as Bernard's death was a long-forgotten incident from another era. Thousands of people turned out at Belgrave Cemetery in February 1893 for the funeral of Henry Scotton, after he died in similar circumstances.  He lived on Wand Street, off Belgrave Road. He was 41, just a year older than Bernard, and he was also the victim of freak weather. He was not on the way to a football match, but he was walking past our old ground when high winds caused part of the perimeter wall to collapse on top of him.

This was the Belgrave Road ground when it was our home in the 1880s:

It might still have been our home today if Leicester Tigers had not outbid us for the use of the site in 1888. That red line marks the section of perimeter wall 18 yards long and ten feet high that was blown over. As the inquest into Scotton's death was told, attached to the wall, four feet from the ground, was a huge advertising hoarding, ten yards long and fourteen feet high. This was fixed against the wall by three upright 'deal planks'. The whole lot came down on top of the poor Mr. Scotton.

The hoarding was owned by Captain Winstanley of the Leicester Opera House, and the latest bill on the hoarding had been posted six days before by Thomas Brown's Billposting company of Upper Charles Street, on a day when, two miles away, Leicester Fosse were playing Wednesbury Old Athletic in the Midland League at their new Walnut Street ground.

After hearing evidence from all parties and inspecting the site, a jury returned a verdict of accidental death, the coroner saying that the difficulty in fixing responsibility was too great to warrant a verdict of manslaughter.

In 1901, British United Shoe Machinery purchased the site for a new factory. You can see that, with the old ground marked, in this picture from the 1930s:

The canal on the left will have been flowing gently down from the site of our current home, on its way passing under the Upperton Road bridge, from where that other hoarding was blown away in 2004.

There'll be many tributes to Bernard Murphy today, especially on Merseyside of course. And next time I'm back in Leicester I'll pop into Belgrave Road cemetery to see if I can find Henry Scotton's grave. Perhaps if you live nearby you can do the same. I wish I could find out if he was a Leicester Fosse supporter, back then when they played at that ground just round the corner from his house.

In 2014 I was back home for the first time in five years, just as we played our first game in the Premier League for ten years - Nigel Pearson's team drew 2-2 at the King Power, against Everton. Just by chance, I walked round the north side of the ground and saw a couple of Evertonians in the garden of rest, at Bernard Murphy's memorial plaque. I chatted to them and they told me Bernard's story. It was the two guys you can see in the photo above. I told them that my parents were originally from the same part of Huyton as Bernard, moving down to Leicester just before I was born. 

Henry Scotton and Bernard Murphy are linked by tragic circumstances, and since 2004 there has been a strengthening link between Leicester City and Everton.

RIP Henry. RIP Bernard.