Lots more to add on this.
First, the tragic story of James Lynch, the Everton fan who died when he fell from a hoarding on Goodison Road during the game against Liverpool on September 24th 1898 (just as Dixie's Uncle Ralph was being filmed playing for West Brom at Ewood Park).
I've been looking into Lynch's case and one thing I wondered was where exactly that hoarding might have been.
There are clues in old photos.
This is the old Goodison Road Stand, and St Luke's Church before it was rebuilt (probably taken in 1896 or 97):
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By the time of James Lynch's accident, that stand had been swept away, replaced by the 'palatial' new structure that opened in September 1897. But at that time, the hoarding you can see in front of the church may well have still been in place, as work on rebuilding St Luke's would not begin for another year.
Zooming in below we can see people perched on top of the hoarding. Was that where Lynch fell from?
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The other possibility is that the hoarding was refigured when the new Goodison Road stand opened. This is from the early years of the new century, with the new stand and the new St Luke's. Notice the different hoarding.
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There's also the possibility that the hoarding was at the other end of the Goodison Road stand, though I have no photographs of that part of the ground from the relevant time. Judging from this map, if there had been a hoarding I'm not sure how good a view of the pitch it would have offered:
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Looking back over 100 years it makes tragic incidents like this one seem all the more poignant. Reports of James Lynch's death at the time say he was 32, but don't say whether he had any children. Who knows how many potential Evertonians he may have fathered had he lived, and in turn, to how many of the following generation those children would have passed on the passion to.
It simply makes me think 'there but for the grace of God go I'.
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