General Stud Book
Before the introduction in 1913 of what became popularly known—"with questionnable taste" according to a correspondent writing in "The Times"—as the Jersey Act, Thoroughbred horses in the United Kingdom were registered in the "General Stud Book", the stud book for British and Irish Thoroughbreds. The rules allowed a horse to be registered if all of the horse's ancestors were registered in the "General Stud Book" or if it had been bred outside of Britain or Ireland and was registered in the stud book of its country of origin. Overall the "General Stud Book" had the most stringent rules for registration of Thoroughbreds at the time, around 1900; other countries, including the United States, France, Australia and Russia, were considered by the British and Irish to be much laxer and to have allowed some non-Thoroughbred horses into their national stud books.