Bloomsbury was a bay horse described as looking "coarse" but very powerful,[1] standing 15.3 hands high,[2] bred by Mr Cattle, a farmer from Sheriff Hutton.

[9] Ridden by Samuel "Sim" Templeman, he was well-placed ("always handy") and turned into the straight in third or fourth place behind the filly Deception who had a clear advantage over Euclid.

At one stage, the filly's lead grew to five lengths, but Templeman moved steadily closer on Bloomsbury and made his challenge a furlong from the finish.

Craven was unwilling to accept the decision, claiming that he had been given insufficient time to prepare his case[11] and announced his intention of taking legal action.

Despite carrying a five pound weight penalty as a result of his Derby win, he started 1/5 favourite and won by a length from the 2000 Guineas winner The Corsair.

Two days later at the same meeting he won a £200 Sweepstakes, beating his only rival, an unnamed "sister to Hector", who reportedly had only been entered in the hope that Bloomsbury would be declared ineligible to run because of his questionable pedigree.

[13] The information given to the compilers of the Stud Book on the other hand, was shown to have been inadequately sourced, relying on the word of a local racing official named Orton rather than Weatherbys staff.

[8] The editor of the Sporting Review, commenting on what he called "The Crisis of English Racing", expressed the view that the case had been unfairly represented as a clash between "might and right", with the jury siding with the "yeoman" against "his lord".

[11] The New Sporting Magazine took the opposing view characterizing the case against Ridsdale as a vindictive action conducted by the racing establishment and disgruntled gamblers.

[13] Bloomsbury started second favourite but lost his unbeaten record as he finished sixth of the twelve runners, having apparently "cut it" (given up) when put under pressure just after half way.

Two days later Bloomsbury reappeared in a £200 Sweepstakes in which he started odds-on favourite but was again struggling well before turning into the straight and finished last of the three runners behind to Epidaurus and The Corsair.

[16] In July at Liverpool Bloomsbury started odds-on favourite and recorded his first win for over a year by beating an unnamed three-year-old filly by Lamplighter at weight-for-age in the one and a quarter mile Croxteth Stakes.

[5] When describing the colt, the Farmer's Magazine commented that he was "overgrown" and appeared to have been trained and fed to "what may be called a state of precocious maturity" while remarking that he was most unlikely to improve with age.