To celebrate 100 Seasons in The Top Flight Blue Kipper has Tracked Down Ant Bushell, a mad Evertonian. Ant had a special Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Grandmother. Her name was Molly Bushell - The Original Toffee Lady.

Ant Bushell

Molly Bushell - The original Toffee Lady Molly is the Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandmother of Ant

Anthony (Ant to his mates) Bushell is 25, a scouser, & an Evertonian. Nothing out of the ordinary there, I here you say. There are thousands like Ant. Yes there are, but are you related to the original Toffee Lady? Ant is! Ant mentioned his story on the Blue Kipper Message Board. He posts as Toffee Ant. A living decendent of The original Toffee Lady, & he's still an Evertonian, going to the match. So we had to take this further. We arranged a meeting, & Ant brought along his Family Tree, & an astonishing file, which catalogues the history of the Bushell family. Ant started watching the Toffees when his Uncle took him to his first game. Since that day he has watched Everton through thick & thin. He now lives in Sheffield, but still gets to the games. Ant told us the story of Molly Bushell.

Ant says: "Basically, I found out about the toffee lady thing when I was about 11, (I'm knocking on 25 now) when my gran, coincidentally also called Molly Bushell, mentioned it. It didnt hold so much significance at that age, it was just sort of 'cool'. Strangely enough it was my uncle on the other side of the family that made me an Evertonian. My dads not a major footy fan, probably a good thing as his dad was apparently a r*d, but he died when I was quite young, so there was no bad influence to be had!

A few years back research into our family tree was completed. Some 30 years of research went into it and a very large portion of the research is dedicated to one Molly Bushell. (see below) Really, Everton are known as 'the toffees' as the Toffee was what was synonymous with the name Everton at the birth of our great club. I am very proud when I see the toffee lady parading at the game, as I truly feel a part of the club when I see the image of my ancestor displaying really what we are about. The Peoples club. Molly was my great great great great great grandmother."

Molly was born in Everon, in 1746, daughter of John Johnson and Anne Cooper and was baptized in April of that year in Walton Parish Church. She married James Bushell in 1761 when she was only fifteen or sixteen years of age, and they made their home in the cottage in which she had been born. Despite her youth, her diligence and care of her family was noticed with admiration by a local doctor.

When he was attending her family professionally, he was further struck with her industry and her way of making slender means go a long way in the rearing of her family and that she was barely rewarded with a sufficiency. He gave her a recipe for a soothing toffee for the children and suggested that she make larger quantities which she could sell. The kindly doctor recommended the toffee to his patients as a cure for sore throats but the public soon found it out and voted it a very good sweet for those well in health!

Molly then, at the open air oven behind the cottage (which was discovered when the cottage was demolished), alone, and in secret, commenced to practice the Art of Toffee Making. Residents from bordering villages began to arrive and take back with them a packet of Everton Toffee and Molly's business flourished. As time went on there was not sufficient space in her premises and she moved across the road to a larger place and there continued the manufacture and sale of her toffee.

The fame of Molly Busshell's Everton Toffee spread and it became fashionable for people from greater distances to drive to Everton in their carriages to sample and take home this sweetmeat. Everton, in the late 1700's was a beautiful and picturesque district, as we can imagine it could be from its situation on the slope of a steep hill with the River Mersey at its base and with the extensive views of the Welsh mountains. So the tourists not only took back the confectionaery but also the memory of a very pleasand district that they had never heard of before, and EVERTON was 'Put on the Map'.

After twenty years hard work, first alone, then with the help of her daughter, Esther Bushell, Molly enlisted the extra help of a cousin, Mrs. Sarah Cooper, in the 1780's, and they worked happily together for a further thirty years. In the time Molly Bushell's daughter, Esther, had married but had returned to continue helping her mother. In fact, she took over the business legally, though being a married woman, it had to be in the name of her husband, ROBERT SANDIFORD.

Likewise, Sarah Cooper's son had married Mary Atherton in 1811.

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Then, in their old age, Molly Bushell and cousin, Sarah Cooper, parted company, for Sarah joined her new daughter-in-law, MARY COOPER, in setting up a similar toffee business at No.1 BROWSIDE, a charming little shop which was much admired by artists. MARY COOPER ran it until her death in 1867. In 1884 it was demolished by the Improvement Committee.

In the 1830's Mary Cooper's daughter, (Sarah's granddaughter) CHARLOTTE COOPER, had married a Robert Sampson and she opened a third toffee shop in Everton at NETHERFIELD ROAD.

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The Toffee Shop Still worn onThe Shirt Today

The Brownside shop established by Molly's cousin, Mrs Cooper & Mrs. Mary Cooper.

Meanwhile when ESTER BUSHELL/SANDIFORD took charge of the Village Street shop from MOLLY she appears to have taken in her young niece, AGNES BUSHELL (Molly's granddaughter) and begun to teach her the business. Agnes remained under the wing of the Sandiford family, even after Esther's death, until her marriage.

In 1830 AGNES BUSHELL married Henry Wignall and she officially inherited the business on the death of Robert Sandiford in 1853. She passed it on to her son, ROBERT WIGNALL, the GREAT-grandson of Molly Bushell, and this enterprising young man extended it to Liverpool city centre by opening two shops in London Road (original wall artwork was discovered here in 1997 - featured in the Echo) and Renshaw Street.

After ROBERT WIGNALL'S untimely death in 1867, at the age of 34 years the Everton Toffe business begun by Molly Bushell 150 years previously, did not go out of the family, for the next owner was a distant cousin, CHARLOTTE COOPER/SAMPSON who already had a toffee shop in Netherfield Road, Everton. Charlotte passed the premises on to her son, ROBERT SAMPSON, and thence to his daughter, Mrs. NORRIS, who sold it to the large firm of NOBLETTS in 1894. The building in Village Street was still standing in 1930 looking very much as Molly Bushell had left it in 1818.

It was a commercial artist at Nobletts who designed the Trademark depicting Molly Bushell, based on descriptions gathered from the older people of Everton who remembered Molly. At first it was always referred to as 'MOLLY BUSHELL' but the name subsequently became 'MOTHER NOBLETT' as being more appropriate to the Noblett firm.

Toffee Lady Cries when we loose

Toffee Lady Jigs when we win

The original toffee is now enclosed in a mint - "Everton Mints" and manufactured by Barker & Dobson. Today, more than two centuries after Molly Bushell started her business, her memory lives on, for the Everton Football Team are known as "The Toffees" and 'Molly Bushell' walks around at matchs scattering her Mints to the fans and willing the Team to keep "Everton on the Map". Her caricature may be seem in the heading of the 'Football Echo' each time that Everton Football Team plays a match. If Everton lose Molly weeps for them, but after a win she dances a jig. (14/08/02)

Click here to see The Bushell Family Tree            Other Everton History