Talk:Jersey Act

A few comments

Please do not consider this a formal peer review, but I noticed the article as I was placing Jerry Voorhis for P.R. and I read it.

1. 1. The article seems to assume the reader knows the requirements for a horse to be considered a thoroughbred. Some brief mention of the three stallions should be made.

There is no requirement that a horse trace to one of the "three foundation stallions" however. In practice, they all do. But in actuality, each stud book handles their own registration requirements, and one of the reasons for the acts' passage was that British requirements differed from American requirements. British were stricter, but because of repicrocity rules, the British were required to recognize the American registrations, which some British breeders feared would lead to a flooding of their markets.

1. 2. Perhaps make some mention of the fact that the Jockey Club has effective regulatory power over much of the racing industry in the U.K.?

The JC handles racing, Weatherby's handles registration (or did at this point in time. It may have changed recently). I've tried to bring this out a bit more.

1. 3. Thoroughbred is capitalized. Is that common practice?

Yes, when you are referring to a specific breed, as this is.

1. 4. I think you really, really need to set out, both in the lede and in the body of the article, and prominently, whether or not the Jersey Act had any effect on the eligibility to race of ineligible horses in the U.K. I gather it did not.
2. 5. If there's thought of running this for FA, please expand the lede to 3 or 4 paragraphs. The article likely would need to be considerably expanded as well.
3. 6. Some more info about how the Jersey Act came into force would be nice. Was there public pressure? Discussions in the media? Was it opposed by some Brits? What was the American reaction in 1912-13? NY Times archives are free that far back. And just to say Weatherbys (a company) consulted with the Jockey Club leaves out the actions of people.

Actually, there was little discussion in the media, it appears. I point out below the searches in the NYTimes...I'll try some more newspapers, but generally this was of limited impact on non-horsey folks... Ealdgyth - Talk 22:24, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Good luck.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not the primary editor here (heck, I actually am not sure I have ever edited on this article), but a couple of comments/thoughts. I'll let the primary editor mull over #1 and #2, but perhaps a brief summary may be in order, though note the Thoroughbred article is extremely comprehensive in this regard. As for #3, Yes, Thoroughbred IS capitalized. It's a proper name for a specific horse breed, not a "generic" term for purebred. Other than that, I'll step aside for now and go back to my popcorn... Montanabw^(talk) 00:22, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I've placed what I can on the immediate impact, but it's very surprising how little outcry there actually was. Here's my NYTimes search... [1] which showed up nothing that is free. A slightly wider search [2] still shows nothing pertinent. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:35, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

More sources...

• Pittsburgh Press 22 Dec 1943
• Palm Beach Post 2 Sept 1946
• Herald-Journal 31 Aug 1946
• Thoroughbred Times 14 Feb 2000
• Montreal Gazette 22 July 1948

There are also some pay per view articles from the London Times, but ... I'm not sure I wanna pay for them. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:12, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree Auwal Abubakar (talk) 03:37, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Impurity not cured by passage of time

The statement that "by 1949 the impure ancestors of the American bloodlines had receded far back in most horses' ancestry" is false logic. If a horses ancestry was impure, the horse would have impure blood, no matter how many generations had passed.Royalcourtier (talk) 01:10, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

The point is, surely, that the idea that blood "purity" was a real distinction of any value whatsoever - when measured against MONEY - was ultimately realized to be a ridiculous, meaningless, imbecilic, worthless nonsense. All involved in possession of any amount of wits were finally eager to find any reason to overlook the comical fiction of claimed bloodline - which was utterly unverifiable at the time, in any case. Rt3368 (talk) 07:30, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

profile pic

Need to use pic as profile? Auwal Abubakar (talk) 03:40, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Great job

Outstanding article guys. And a good reminder that a great article doesn't necessarily need to be a really long article... --Legis (talk - contribs) 14:27, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Lead sentence

The lead sentence doesn't actually explain what the article is about. What was the Jersey Act? Was it an Act of Parliament or an organisation's policy? UaMaol (talk) 15:51, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

• UaMaol, see next section. Moonraker (talk) 22:45, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Discussion copied here from Wikipedia:Today's featured article

• "The Jersey Act was a 1913 regulation by the British Jockey Club..." but the article says "Nor was it promulgated by the Jockey Club, which had no authority over registration". DuncanHill (talk) 15:28, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
  • Yeah, the JC did the "passing" but the owners of the GSB actually put it in their book and rules... so ... welcome to the murky world of horse-racing! Technically the British JC couldn't impose a registration rule but because the GSB actually put it in ... it happened. The whole episode was pretty toothless, and in the end, it ended up backfiring and hurting British racing more than American racing. Ealdgyth (talk) 15:37, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
    • The blurb says it was a regulation by the Jockey Club, the article says it wasn't. Should a blurb directly contradict the article it is promoting? DuncanHill (talk) 18:00, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
      • The blurb says "The Jersey Act was a 1913 regulation by the British Jockey Club and the owners of the General Stud Book"
        The lead says "the Jockey Club and the owners of the General Stud Book passed a regulation".
        The body says "At a meeting of the Jockey Club ... proposed a resolution ... It passed unanimously in May,[13] and a new regulation was placed in the General Stud Book". I'm not seeing the contradiction here, but maybe I'm missing something. - SchroCat (talk) 18:17, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
        • It wasn't a Jockey Club regulation. A resolution is not a regulation. It was a Stud Book regulation. The Jockey Club had no authority over registration, and did not promulgate the Jersey Act. The regulation was by the owners of the Stud Book. The Jockey Club might have agreed with it, but it was not a Jockey Club regulation. It was not a regulation by the Jockey Club. DuncanHill (talk) 19:35, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
          • I read it as a combination of the JC and the stud book, which is what the blurb and the lead says. - SchroCat (talk) 19:43, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
            • The problem is surely in the word "regulation". I can't find a specialist reliable source which uses it. For instance, Encyclopedia of British Horse Racing (2012, p. 215) says "... the Jersey Act of 1913 in which the Jockey Club banned horses with American bloodlines from the General Stud Book." The Thoroughbred (1972, p. 170) says "The Jersey Act had been instituted in 1913 to exclude from the English General Stud Book any horse whose both sire and dam were not registered in a previous volume." Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald's The Book of the Horse (1947, p. 500) quotes from the resolution of the Club: "The qualification (for registration in the Stud Book) will now read as follows: No horse..." etc. So it seems the Club was in a position to dictate the policy to the Stud Book, but the word "regulation" is mistaken. Moonraker (talk) 22:37, 8 September 2024 (UTC)