BH 100: Weekly Format Takes Shape

By Edward L. Bowen

The forerunners of Blood-Horse were the Kentucky Thoroughbred Horse Association Bulletin and then the Thoroughbred Horse Association Bulletin, first published in 1916 and 1917, respectively. The THA was a vigorous organization that attracted nearly 700 members, and its monthly Bulletin was supported in part by members' donation of 1% of their horses' winning purses. The aims and activities from the onset of the THA included unifying horsemen in promoting better purses from racetracks, pushing railroads to run horse transportation cars on schedule, and combating the sequence of anti-racing legislation that seriously beleaguered the Turf.

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Many years later Kent Hollingsworth, editor and/or publisher of The Blood-Horse from 1963-87, observed that by 1928, "the need and enthusiasm for the organization had waned. Horsemen were reluctant to allocate 1% of their purse earnings to the association, and Col. E.R. Bradley (owner of Idle Hour Farm) personally contributed $50,000 to keep the association going."

Bradley's largesse was not open-ended, and when he declined to run for a sixth term as president, the association's past presidents resigned from the board, as did secretary Tom Cromwell.

However, the monthly bulletin was regarded as popular enough that Cromwell, its editor for 12 years, paid $1 and other considerations for the title of the journal in April 1928, and set out to continue publishing it. The incoming directorate of the THA felt they should retain the corporate title, so Cromwell shortened the publication's name to The Thoroughbred. After two issues were distributed questions arose as to whether its name infringed upon the trademark of an already existing periodical, The Thoroughbred Record.

Cromwell, a veteran journalist as well as a horseman, summoned a phrase that at the time he regarded as a common and widely understood term. Wrote Cromwell: "We have no desire to be unfair...so we have changed the name to The Blood-Horse, which is merely another way of saying The Thoroughbred."

(To those of us who joined the staff some decades later, the memory of the occasional vagrant showing up at the door in the hope of being paid for giving blood suggests that at some point the term passed from common usage among the general population. However, we do recall an edition of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in which a drawing of Tiny Tim perched upon his hurrying-along father's shoulders had the caption "Bob Cratchit was Tiny Tim's blood horse" on their way home.)

The first edition under the name of The Blood-Horse was identified as Vol. XIII, No. 6, and was dated "Week Ending May 11, 1929."

The phrase "Week Ending" was a source of pride, for content therein noted that "we have all along been told so often that the only objection to The Blood-Horse was that it doesn't come out frequently enough."

The first issue included 28 pages and had a trim size of about 6 3⁄4 inches wide by 10 inches deep. It was all in black and white. The institutional green for which the magazine cover would come to be known made a first temporary appearance two years later. The first edition's cover photo was of Col. Bradley's Blue Larkspur, who was coming off an April 25 win in Lexington and was regarded as favorite for the Kentucky Derby. For the most part, however, the early cover illustrations reflected less timeliness and more of what editor Cromwell had on hand or could arrange, and stallions frequently adorned the front page.

The first issue under the name of The Blood-Horse gave a subtle hint of one of the offerings to horsemen that would be a hallmark—stallion statistics. This primitive form was an alphabetical list of sires of all winners in the United States, Cuba, and Mexico from Jan. 1-April 30, 1929. It provided number of winners, number of races won, and aggregate first-place winnings. Accompanying text pointed out that 12 of the 20 leaders were imported stallions. The potential for international traffic in the opposite direction was hinted at in a report on Mr. and Mrs. John D. Hertz' 1928 Kentucky Derby winner Reigh Count and his preparation in England for the Ascot Gold Cup. (He finished second, but won the Coronation Cup.)

Amid various racing reports and comment in that first edition was a description (with caricatures) of Will Rogers' appearance at a dinner attended by more than 800 horse lovers at Boston's Hotel Statler, and a terse suggestion that the recent trend of increased use of blinkers on racehorses might be nothing but a fad.

Most prominent advertisements were full page presentations by the Fasig-Tipton sales company and the new Arlington Park. The latter's list of purses for upcoming stakes included the Classic's $60,000, which was $10,000 more than that of the Kentucky Derby.

The name of editor Tom Cromwell was destined to linger through various chapters into the magazine's ongoing history and racing's present. John A. Bell III was taken on as a partner in Cromwell Bloodstock in 1949 and in 1950 acquired half-interest. Bell later took in Alex Bower as partner. The connection with The Blood-Horse resumed when Bell became a member of the publications committee and Bower became publisher in the 1960s. The magazine by then was owned by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association.

Bell and family members also later operated advertising and insurance businesses under the  Cromwell banner as well as developing Jonabell Farm. Jonabell later was acquired by the Darley operation, of which son Jimmy Bell is president in 2016. Also recently, Jimmy Bell's son Gatewood Bell has saluted his family history by operating in the name of Cromwell Bloodstock Agency.

Interspersed among his stints as editor and bloodstock agent, Tom Cromwell had input for Daily Racing Form on the format of its seminal and lasting past performances format. He also put out weekly newsy and folksy bloodstock agency bulletins that might be likened to a blog in today's world.

All that sense of Thoroughbred class and order perhaps has pushed to history's back burner the rip-roaring aspects of Cromwell's career. Well off the Turf, Cromwell had stints covering violent times in Eastern Kentucky for the Cincinnati Enquirer and was said once to have provided one fellow a last meal, with whiskey, in return for an exclusive confession of 32 murders. Cromwell also investigated then signed arrest documents after the assassination of Kentucky Gov. William Goebel in 1900.

All in all, such experiences presumably left him unshaken by the most tumultuous of Kentucky Derbys, or any other shenanigans the racetrack might produce.