“It is the conviction of those who are best informed that no other panic was ever so fatal to the middle class. It reached every hearth, it saddened every heart in the metropolis. Entire families were ruined. There was scarcely an important town in England, but what beheld some wretched suicide. Daughters, delicately nurtured, went out to seek their bread; sons were recalled from academies; households were separated: homes were desecrated by the emissaries of the law. There was a disruption of every social tie. The debtor’s jails were peopled with promoters; Whitecross Street was filled with speculators; and the Queen’s bench was full to overflowing. Men who had lived comfortably and independently, found themselves suddenly responsible for sums they had no means of paying. In some cases they yielded their all, and began the world anew; in others, they left the country for the continent, laughed at their creditors, and defied pursuit. One gentleman was served with four hundred writs: a peer, similarly pressed, when offered to be relieved from all liabilities for £15,000, betook himself to his yacht, and forgot, in the beauties of the Mediterranean, the difficulties which had surrounded him. Another gentleman, who, having nothing to lose, surrendered himself to his creditors, was a director of more than twenty lines. A third was Provisional Committee man to fifteen. A fourth, who commenced life as a printer, who became an insolvent in 1832, and a bankrupt in 1837, who had negotiated partnerships, who had arranged embarrassed affairs, who had collected debts, and turned his attention to anything, did not disdain, also, to be a railway promoter, a railway director, or to spell his name in a dozen different ways.”
But a notice of the Railway Mania would be very incomplete without mention of George Hudson, the Railway King. He was born at Howsham, a village near York, in March 1800, was apprenticed to a draper in York, and subsequently became principal in the business; thus, early in life, becoming well off, besides having £30,000 left him by a distant relative. In 1837 he was Lord Mayor of York, and the same year was made Chairman of the York and North Midland Railway, which was opened in 1839. In 1841 he was elected Chairman of the Great North of England Company, and, afterwards held the same position in the Midland Railway Company. He speculated largely in Railways; and in the Parliamentary return, already alluded to (p. 270) his subscriptions appear as £319,835.
He came to London, and inhabited the house at Albert Gate, Knightsbridge (now the French Embassy) where he entertained the Prince Consort, and the aristocracy generally. He was elected M.P. for Sunderland in Aug. 1845, and again served as Lord Mayor of York in 1846. The Railway smash came, and year by year things went worse with him, until, early in the year 1849 he had to resign his chairmanship of the Eastern Counties (now Great Eastern), Midland, York, Newcastle and Berwick, and the York and North Midland Railway Companies. He went abroad, where he lived for some time, and tried, unavailingly, to retrieve his fortune. In July 1865 he was committed to York Castle for Contempt of the Court of Exchequer, in not paying a large debt, and was there incarcerated till the following October.
He fell so low, that in 1868 some friends took pity on him and raised a subscription for him, thus obtaining £4800, with which an annuity was purchased. He died in London, 14th Dec. 1871.
In conclusion, as a place for gambling, the Stock Exchange is of far greater extent than the Turf. The time bargains and options, without which the business of the Exchange would be very little, are gambling pure and simple, whilst the numerous bucket shops, with their advertisements and circulars, disseminate the unwholesome vice of gambling throughout the length and breadth of the land, enabling people to speculate without anyone being the wiser. It is needless to say, that, as on the Turf, they are the losers.
CHAPTER XXII
Permissible gambling—Early Marine Assurance—Oldest and old Policies—Lloyd’s—Curious Insurances—Marine Assurance Companies—Fire Insurance—Its origin and early Companies—Life Insurance—Early Companies—Curious story of Life Insurance.
But, paradoxical as it may appear, there is a class of gambling which is not only considered harmless, but beneficial, and even necessary—I mean Insurance. Theoretically, it is gambling proper. You bet 2s. 6d. to £100 with your Fire Insurance; you equally bet on a Marine Insurance for the safe arrival of your ships or merchandise; and it is also gambling when you insure your life. Yet a man would be considered culpable, or at the very least, negligent and indiscreet did he not insure.