Jersey Act - Introduction

Introduction

The owners of the General Stud Book, Weatherbys, consulted with the Jockey Club, the United Kingdom's racing authority, and discussions were held about the problems in pedigrees recorded in the American Stud Book. At a meeting of the Jockey Club in spring 1913, Victor Child Villiers, Lord Jersey, the club's senior steward, proposed a resolution limiting the registration of American bloodlines. It passed unanimously in May, and a new regulation was placed in the General Stud Book, Volume 22:

No horse or mare can, after this date, be considered as eligible for admission unless it can be traced without flaw on both sire's and dam's side of its pedigree to horses and mares themselves already accepted in the earlier volumes of the book.

Although named the Jersey Act by a critical foreign press, after Lord Jersey, the new regulation did not have the force of law as it was promulgated by the registration authorities of the Thoroughbred horse, not by the United Kingdom government. Nor was it promulgated by the Jockey Club, which had no authority over registration, only over racing matters. The regulation required that any horse registered in the General Stud Book trace in every line to a horse that had already been registered in the General Stud Book, effectively excluding most American-bred Thoroughbreds.