HUDSON, George (1800-1871), of Newby Park, North Riding, Yorks. and Londesborough, East Riding.

Known as the ‘Railway King’, George Hudson was the first of the great railway barons, who, according to one contemporary, ‘became rich by keeping everything but his accounts’.1Cited in C. Wolmar, Fire and steam: a new history of the railways in Britain (2007), 97. Born at Howsham, Yorkshire, the fifth son of a tenant farmer, he was apprenticed at the age of fifteen to a linen draper in York and became a partner six years later. In 1827 he received a legacy of £30,000 from a great-uncle, Matthew Bottril, which bought him political prominence in York, where he became treasurer of the local Conservative party in 1832, an alderman in 1835, and lord mayor in 1837.2M. Reed, ‘Hudson, George, [the Railway King] (1800-1871)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. Re-elected to the mayoralty the following year, even though he was not strictly eligible to stand as he had completed his three-year term of office as an alderman, he manipulated the electoral roll in the Conservatives’ favour at the 1839 municipal elections and became a hugely divisive figure in York politics.3P. Brett, ‘The Liberal middle class and politics in three provincial towns: Newcastle, Bristol, York’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Durham (1991), 332-5.

In 1833 Hudson subscribed for 500 shares in a proposed railway joining York to the Leeds to Selby line, became chairman of the subsequent York and North Midland railway company when it obtained an act of Parliament in 1837, and thereafter pursued an aggressive strategy of amalgamating existing railway companies with the intention of creating a monopoly.4Wolmar, Fire and steam, 98. In 1842 Parliament granted his proposal to build a line from Darlington to Newcastle and he merged the Birmingham and Derby and the Midland Counties companies with his own that same year. Wary of the Peel ministry’s efforts to regulate railway mania, he successfully lobbied William Gladstone, then president of the board of trade, during the negotiations leading to the 1844 Railway Act, securing concessions in favour of railway companies.5D. Mountfield, The railway barons (1979), 51-2; Reed, ‘Hudson, George’.

Although Hudson was keen to offer for his home constituency of Whitby, he was persuaded by local Conservatives to come forward for a vacancy at Sunderland in 1845, and after a bitter contest, topped the poll.6The Times, 18 Aug. 1845. To consolidate his local influence, he then bought out the shareholders of the Sunderland and Durham railway, and decreed that the Newcastle and Darlington railway should put up £75,000 towards the construction of the Sunderland south docks.7A. Heesom, ‘Parliamentary politics: 1830 to the 1860s’ in G.E. Milburn and S.T. Miller, eds., Sunderland: river, town and people: a history from the 1780s (1988), 95. By the time he took his seat in January 1846, however, his railway monopoly was under threat from the Great Northern’s plans to construct a line from London to York. Although he had become chairman of the Eastern Counties railway in 1845, his rival plan to construct a line into London from the Midlands failed to garner support, and despite his ‘straight and devious’ attempts to ‘block it at every stage of the parliamentary procedure’, the Great Northern company secured an act of Parliament in June 1846.8O.S. Nock, 150 years of mainline railways (1980), 39. He responded by securing his shareholders’ approval for thirty-two new parliamentary bills, but was unable to unite his railways through legislation in 1847.9Mountfield, Railway barons, 60.

A frequent speaker with a ‘bluff Yorkshire voice’, Hudson habitually wore a white waistcoat in the Commons, and was mocked by Daniel O’Connell for looking like ‘a turbot ... sitting on its tail with its belly outwards’.10B. Bailey, George Hudson: the rise and fall of the Railway King (1995), 68. Not surprisingly, his contributions mainly concerned the railway interest, and, displaying a mastery of detail, he consistently warned of the dangers of state intervention, and had some success in ensuring the withdrawal of bills that proposed greater regulation. He told Parliament that ‘instead of harassing us year after year with Motions ... you ought to do something to secure to us the privileges we are entitled to’, 19 Mar. 1846, urged against an inquiry into the safety of railway labourers, 30 Apr. 1846, and insisted that intervention in tolls and fares would be a ‘retrograde movement’, 11 Feb. 1847. He reserved his greatest criticism, however, for the railway commissioners appointed by the board of trade, stating that ‘he did not see why [they] should be continued for one hour longer’, 28 Mar. 1848. He pressed these same arguments in the numerous select committees on railway bills on which he served and appeared as a witness in the 1840s.

Hudson’s distaste for state intervention was also evident in his opposition to the Russell ministry’s health of towns bill, claiming that ‘the country was sick of centralization, of commissions, of preliminary inquiries’, 18 June 1847. An arch protectionist, he also made lengthy speeches against repeal of the corn laws, 17 Feb., 3 Mar. and 6 Mar. 1846, against the reduction of tea duties, 10 Feb. 1848, and against the repeal of navigation laws, 2 June 1848. On this issue he generally followed Lord George Bentinck, who invited him to help prepare his unsuccessful Irish railway bill, and Disraeli into the division lobbies, although he did not share their support for religious toleration, voting against the Catholic relief bill, 8 Dec. 1847, and the removal of Jewish disabilities, 11 Feb. 1848.

When railway mania began to subside at the end of the decade, Hudson lost some of his prestige, and his drinking habits were mocked by Joseph Hume, who noted his ‘nightly habit’ of coming to the Commons ‘flushed, he would not say with champagne’.11Quoted in Ibid., 87. He then lost all credibility in April 1849 when committees of inquiry by the shareholders of the Eastern Counties railway and the York, Newcastle and Berwick railway exposed his fraudulent dealings. He had consistently paid dividends out of capital, manipulated the accounts, and misappropriated vast sums of money, which he now had to repay. At the time of the inquiries, it was estimated that his liabilities were three quarters of a million pounds.12Reed, ‘Hudson, George’; Bailey, George Hudson, 107. He subsequently resigned his company directorships and was present for only 3 out of 214 divisions that session.13Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 20 Oct. 1849. Between parliamentary sessions he escaped to France and Spain in order to evade his creditors.14Reed, ‘Hudson, George’. Although Charles Greville recorded that ‘most people rejoice at the degradation of a purse-proud, vulgar upstart’,15Quoted in Bailey, George Hudson, 113. The Times reserved its greatest criticism for a railway system that was ‘without rule’ and ‘without order’, stating that ‘Mr Hudson’s position was not only new to himself, but absolutely a new thing in the world altogether’.16The Times, 10 Apr. 1849. The Commons subsequently launched its own inquiry into allegations that Hudson had bribed members to facilitate the passage of railway bills, 17 May 1849, but the investigation came to nothing.17Mountfield, Railway barons, 67-72.

Despite his national disgrace, Hudson maintained his status as a local hero when he triumphantly opened the Sunderland docks in 1850.18Heesom, ‘Parliamentary politics’. He was returned at the head of the poll at the 1852 general election and secured second place in 1857. He lent support to Disraeli’s budget, arguing that it ‘conferred great benefit on the poor’, 10 Dec. 1852, and divided with him on most major issues thereafter. He maintained his opposition to the extension of religious liberties, voting against church rate abolition, 21 June 1854. His speeches now mainly concerned the shipping interest, and he consistently pressed for the abolition of passing tolls in Sunderland, 7 Mar. 1853, 12 May, 29 May and 25 June 1857. He also remained implacably opposed to the board of trade, urging against its intervention in the merchant shipping bill, 15 July 1853, and attacking its president for not repealing timber duties, 3 Mar. 1859. His attendance could still be poor though, and he was absent for 213 out of 257 divisions in 1853, and did not attend at all in 1856.19Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions of the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 6. When present, his drinking habits often made him a figure of fun, and on one occasion he was humiliated by Bernal Osborne, who, responding to his intervention, joked that ‘at such an early hour of the evening he would beg to inform the honourable member for Sunderland that he had no excuse for the interruption he was causing’, 10 Dec. 1852. When Hudson rose to defend himself, he was met with roars of laughter.20Bailey, George Hudson, 121.

By the time of the 1859 general election, the Sunderland dock company was beginning to fail, and Hudson was not surprisingly defeated. Declining the opportunity to contest his native town of Whitby at an 1859 by-election, he retired permanently to France to avoid his creditors.21Reed, ‘Hudson, George’. He returned to England to offer for Whitby at the 1865 general election, but before he could proceed to the poll, was arrested at the suit of one of his creditors and imprisoned at York for three months. His debts were eventually compounded, however, and his friends secured him an annuity of £600 per annum, with which he retired to live with his wife in a small house at 87 Churton Street, London. In December 1871 he was taken ill in York and returned home, where he died from angina. He was succeeded by his only surviving son, George, a factory inspector.22Ibid.

Following his fall from grace, Hudson had announced in the Commons that ‘I have had a bitter reverse to bear. ... I may perhaps leave to posterity, and may in after life refer with pride and satisfaction to works which I have either projected or prompted’, 8 Feb. 1854. His obituarist in The Times was certainly unequivocal about his achievements, writing that ‘it is impossible to deny that he did great things to develop the railway system in the North of England’,23The Times, 16 Dec. 1871. and railway historians have also given balanced assessments, his most recent biographer concluding that ‘he was, at one and the same time, a crooked operator and a man of great achievements’.24Bailey, George Hudson, 159. For similar assessments see Mountfield, Railway barons, 74; Wolmar, Fire and steam, 102. However, although at his peak in 1849, he controlled 1,450 miles of railway, he never achieved his ultimate aim of merging his railways into an integrated whole. Nevertheless, given the organisational chaos surrounding railway mania, this was probably an impossible task. As The Times commented at the time of his downfall:

Mr Hudson found himself everything at once; a large shareholder, a comprehensive projector, a chairman, a trustee for shareholders, an agent for particular transactions, a broker, a contractor, a banker, a confidential friend of landowners, and a good deal more besides. Had he discharged all these functions with perfect fairness, he would have been little less than an angel, and that he certainly is not.25The Times, 10 Apr. 1849.