Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/National Sporting Club/archive2

National Sporting Club

Nominator(s): Metalicat (talk) 19:33, 22 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For nearly forty years the National Sporting Club was the de facto governing body of British boxing, despite being a private Covent Garden dining club whose members watched in evening dress and were forbidden to call out during the rounds. It did more than stage bouts. Manslaughter trials brought after boxers died in its ring won the sport legal toleration in English law; it fixed the weight divisions and the in-ring referee that boxing still uses; and in 1909 it created the Lonsdale Belt, still the prize British champions fight for. The same pursuit of respectability also entrenched a colour bar that shut Black boxers out of British titles for decades. The club handed its authority to the new British Boxing Board of Control in 1929, but what it built, for good and ill, outlived it.

It reached GA after a peer review, and I have substantially re-sourced it since an earlier, premature nomination in January 2026 that was rightly archived on the grounds of it being a bin fire! Thanks to Vestrian24Bio for the GA review and RoySmith for the peer review. Metalicat (talk) 19:46, 22 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

William_Howard_Robinson_A_Welsh_Victory_at_the_National_Sporting_Club_1919.jpg: source link is dead; when and where was this first published?

The dead Bonhams link is now archived on the file (Wayback capture, 11 October 2025), with the Lewisham Local History and Archives Centre catalogue as supporting provenance. On first publication: the painting depicts the 31 March 1919 contest, is signed and dated 1921, and was reproduced in the British illustrated press and issued as prints (with a key identifying those depicted), and exhibited at the Arlington Galleries, London, in the early 1920s. Metalicat (talk) 18:34, 23 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

File:Phil_May_-The_Flemingo_(John_Fleming)_Bruges_1889.png needs a US tag. Ditto File:National_Sporting_Club_entrance_hall_and_staircase_illustration_by_Harry_Furniss.jpg, File:Jackson_v_Slavin_boxing_match_illustration_Harry_Furniss.jpg

Done Metalicat (talk) 18:34, 23 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

These also need date and place of first publication. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:54, 23 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria: Thank you, I have chased the first-publication question for all three. Where each stands:

Jackson v Slavin (File:Jackson v Slavin boxing match illustration Harry Furniss.jpg): traced. Harry Furniss drew this for Punch, or the London Charivari, where it appeared as "The Great Contest: Black and White at the National Sporting Club, Monday, May 30, 1892", vol. 102, 11 June 1892, p. 287 (London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co. - The image on the file is a partial reproduction from Deghy (1956).

Phil May caricature of John Fleming (File:Phil May -The Flemingo (John Fleming) Bruges 1889.png): not traced. The drawing is captioned "Bruges, 1889" and is reproduced in Guy Deghy, Noble and Manly (Hutchinson, 1956), p. 76, but I have not been able to place an earlier publication. Phil May died in 1903.

National Sporting Club interior (File:National Sporting Club entrance hall and staircase illustration by Harry Furniss.jpg): not traced. Reproduced in Deghy (1956), but I have not found the original. It is not in Harry Furniss at Home (1904) or his other reminiscence volumes, so it most likely accompanied a periodical feature on the club that I have not yet located. Harry Furniss died in 1925.

For the two I cannot place, I would value your steer. Both are, in my reading, in the public domain in the United States on the artists' death dates regardless of first publication: a work by an artist who died in 1903 or 1925 is out of US copyright whether it was first published before 1929 (term expired) or never formally published (life plus 70, expired in 1973 and 1995 respectively). If you are content with that basis I will set the licensing on the death dates and record on each file that first publication is not established. If you would rather not rely on it, I am happy to remove both from the article. Metalicat (talk) 18:21, 24 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that if both were reproduced in 1956, they likely wouldn't qualify as being unpublished. Is that the earliest known publication? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:16, 25 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria: Agreed. I suspect these were published earlier, but I cannot find the proof. I have removed both from the article: File:Phil May -The Flemingo (John Fleming) Bruges 1889.png and File:National Sporting Club entrance hall and staircase illustration by Harry Furniss.jpg. If I can place an original publication for either, I will bring it back with the licensing on that footing. The article reads fine without them. Metalicat (talk) 22:34, 25 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

File:Sketch_of_National_Sporting_Club_audience._1897.jpg: when and where was this first published? Ditto File:Queen_Alexandra_British_Sportsmens_Ambulance_Fund_WWI.jpg. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:03, 23 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

1897 audience sketch: confirmed as the plate "At the National Sporting Club" from London as seen by Charles Dana Gibson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897), viewable in full at Project Gutenberg (ebook 62738). Author Charles Dana Gibson (1867–1944); first published 1897.

Queen Alexandra photograph: traced to its first publication in the British press, Sporting Life, 29 June 1916 (p. 4) reporting Queen Alexandra's presentation of the British Sportsmen's Ambulance Fund vehicles at Marlborough House. The file is re-dated to 1916 and the source corrected accordingly. Metalicat (talk) 18:34, 23 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria: Thanks for the review and the ce you conducted. I think I have rectified the above points. Metalicat (talk) 18:34, 23 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]