Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/George Hudson

HUDSON, George (1800–1871), the “railway king,” was born in York in 1800, was a successful linen draper in that city, and subsequently became the leading representative of the railway mania of 1845–46. Elected chairman of the North Midland Company, he was for three years the ruling spirit of speculation and as the arbiter of capital held the key of untold treasures. All classes delighted to honour him, and, as if a colossal fortune were an insufficient reward for his public services, the richest men in England presented him with a tribute of £20,000. Deputy-lieutenant for Durham, and thrice lord mayor of York, he was returned in the Conservative interest for Sunderland in 1845, the event being judged of such public interest that the news was conveyed to London by a special train, which travelled part of the way at the rate of 75 miles an hour. Full of rewards and honours, he was suddenly ruined by the disclosure of the Eastern Railway frauds. Sunderland clung to her generous representative till 1859, but on the bursting of the bubble he had lost influence and fortune at a single stroke. His later life was chiefly spent on the Continent, where he benefited little by a display of unabated energy and enterprise. Some friends gave him a small annuity a short time before his death, which took place in London, 14th December 1871. His name has long been used to point the moral of vaunting ambition and unstable fortune. The “big swollen gambler,” as Carlyle calls him in one of the Latter Day Pamphlets, was savagely and excessively reprobated by the world which had blindly believed in his golden prophecies. He certainly ruined scrip-holders, and disturbed the great centres of industry; but he had an honest faith in his own schemes, and, while he beggared himself in their promotion, he succeeded in overcoming the powerful landed interest which delayed the adoption of railways in England long after the date of their regular introduction into America.