The death of Everton's first title winning keeper Jack Angus was overshadowed by the loss of two players for future FA Cup ties

 In the third season of league football, Everton, playing at Anfield, took the title for the first time when they knocked reigning Champions Preston North End into second place at the end of the 1890-91 season. 

Jack Angus played his eleventh and final league game of the season in the away game at Deepdale in November 1890. He performed with distinction to ensure Everton suffered only a two goal defeat to a Preston side demonstrating the sort of talents that had seen them win the Football League in its first two seasons. Angus, who began his career with King’s Park of Stirling, injured his knee during the game. His place in goal was taken by new signing from Bootle, David Jardine, in the following match at home to Blackburn Rovers and the new man retained his place between the sticks for the remaining League fixtures.

Angus then made his final first team appearance for the Toffees at Newcastle Road where Sunderland, playing their first season of League football, knocked Everton out of the FA Cup in early January with Johnny Campbell scoring the only goal before a crowd of 20,000. Angus kept the score down with a brilliant save from a Smith shot.

The keeper was to die at the tender age of just twenty-four. On Saturday 8 August 1891, when spending his close season at home in Scotland at his fathers on Deany, Leanhead, he was struck by typhoid fever. It gradually worsened and he died at 10.00 p.m. that night. He was a plumber by trade and unmarried.

The announcement in the Liverpool Echo on the following Monday came the same day as it was reported that Everton players Dan Doyle and Alec Brady had violated the principles of playing during the close season by turning out for Celtic against Cowlairs. This would result in them being cup-tied for Everton for the rest of the season. It is of interest that in the following weekend’s Football Echo section there was an extensive examination of Doyle and Brady’s motives, combined with some condemnatory letters – but not a thing about Angus’s passing.


Taken from Everton: The First Kings of Anfield, 1890/91, published by Amberley Publishing 

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