By 1900 a reader could still find references, but they might be delegated to instruction for novices. Chess Openings for Beginners, by Edward Ernest Cunnington, for example, exhausts itself with "Here we may mention, with a caution, as being quite unsound, the Jerome Gambit." The following year, Cunnington's The Modern Chess Primer mentions the first 6 moves of the named gambit.
In 1902, William Cook's (of Synopsis) The Chess Player's Compendium had no mention of the Jerome Gambit. For that matter, neither did his 1906 The Evolution of the Chess Openings.
Perhaps the 1904 The Complete Chess Guide, by G.H.D Gossip F.J. Lee, showed the Jerome Gambit's hanger-on status best. At the start of the book the authors proclaim
We have therefore eliminated obsolete openings and confined ourselves merely to a brief examination of a dozen of the leading debuts...; omitting those openings in which the defense is declared by the most competent theorists to be weak or inferior, as for example Philidor's and Petroff's Defenses to the Kings Knight's opening; the Sicilian; the Greco Counter Gambit; Center Counter Gambit; Fianchettoes, Blackwar [sic] and Jerome Gambit, etc.
HOWEVER, Part III of the book, "Guide to the Openings," contained Jerome Gambit analysis!
It was left up to the March 1906 edition of Lasker's Chess Magazine to pronounce
"Our Question Box"
Ichabodf: - No; the Jerome gambit is not named after St. Jerome. His penances, if he did any, were in atonement of rather minor transgressions compared with the gambit.
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