In an article published in July 1847, the Pictorial Times wrote of how men such as William Wordsworth, James Watt and George Stephenson had made their mark in life despite their lowly beginnings. However, the paper continued, there was one man who stood out above all others as “an instance of what may be achieved by well-directed energy and great clearness of perception”. That man was George Hudson, whose soubriquet of ‘The Railway King’ showed that he had achieved “the highest eminence in the most important modern element of national prosperity and civilisation” [the railways]. Just two years later, following revelations that some of his business practices were less than ethical, Hudson’s reputation went from hero to zero.
George Hudson’s fall from grace in early 1849 coincided with the bursting of the great ‘Railway Mania’ bubble of 1845-47. Reflecting the country’s embarrassment and shame in being caught up in the pursuit of mammon during those extraordinary years, the nineteenth century political and social commentator Thomas Carlyle described Hudson as a “big swollen gambler”1 and even today, more than 150 years after his passing, Hudson is still often described as a ‘fraudster,’ a ‘charlatan’, even a ‘crook.’ Hudson’s reputation goes before him, but are these insults a fair description of a man who, at the peak of his powers, controlled some 25% of England’s early railway lines, the vast majority of which are still in operation today?
In his article on the Gloucester, Aberystwyth and Central Railway in Backtrack 35/12 (December 2021), Alistair Nisbet relates the problems investors had in getting their money back once it was clear their railway was not going ahead. These investors were fortunate in that they had a company to chase.
During the years of the ‘Railway Mania’, there were various scams and schemes aimed at making money out of the sale and purchase of fake railway shares. For example, a new railway would be proposed and subscription lists issued selling part-paid shares at, say, ten shillings each and then creating a trade in these shares to enable the unscrupulous to make quick profits from a company which not only had never laid a rail but had no intention of laying a rail. Many ordinary people bought these shares in the hope of making a profit, but they often lost their money before they realised the company they were investing in never had any intention of pursuing the railway line it was set up to build. George Hudson never involved himself in such schemes. However, because he was seen as the embodiment of the greed to make money during the ‘Mania’, the responsibility for such scams taking place was often put on him.
When the inevitable crash came the country looked for a scapegoat to blame and one name came immediately to mind. George Hudson was seen as the very epitome of what was wrong with the headlong rush into railway shares during the ‘Mania’. His misdemeanours were like manna from heaven for his many detractors. As soon as the stories of his troubles broke, many newspapers went to town blaming him for the ‘Mania’ and the consequences of its collapse. The for example, exclaimed that Hudson was the “most degraded” figure of the nineteenth century, describing the
