Eighteen hundred and fifty-one was a period of anxiety to the Midland and to railway companies generally. Financial depression had succeeded a time of wild excitement, and the Midland dividend had fallen from seven to two per cent.! It was the year of the great Exhibition, which Lord Cholmondeley considered the event of modern times and many over-sanguine people expected it to inaugurate a universal peace. On the other hand Carlyle uttered fierce denunciations against it. It certainly excited far more interest than has any exhibition since. Then, nothing of the kind had ever before been seen. Railway expectations ran high; immense traffic receipts, sorely needed, ought to have swelled the coffers of the companies. But no! vast numbers of people certainly travelled to London, but a mad competition, as foolish almost as the preceding mania, set in, and passenger fares were again and again reduced, till expected profits disappeared and loss and disappointment were the only result. The policy of Parliament in encouraging
the construction of rival railway routes and in fostering competition in the supposed interest of the public was, even in those early days, bearing fruit—dead sea fruit, as many a luckless holder of railway stock learned to his cost.
Railway shareholders throughout the kingdom were growing angry. In the case of the Midland—they appointed a committee of inquiry, and the directors assented to the appointment. This committee was to examine and report upon the general and financial conditions of the company, and was invested with large powers.
About the same time also interviews took place between the Midland and the London and North-Western, with the object of arranging an amalgamation of the two systems. Some progress was made, but no formal engagement resulted, and so a very desirable union, between an aristocratic bridegroom and a democratic bride, remained unaccomplished.
Mr. Ellis was chairman of the Midland at this time and Mr. George Carr Glyn, afterwards the first Lord Wolverton, occupied a similar position on the Board of the London and North-Western. Mr. Ellis had succeeded Mr. Hudson—the “Railway King,” so christened by Sydney Smith. Mr. Hudson in 1844 was chairman of the first shareholders’ meeting of the Midland Railway. Prior to that date the Midland consisted of three separate railways. In 1849 Mr. Hudson presided for the last time at a Midland meeting, and in the following year resigned his office of chairman of the company.
The story of the meteoric reign of the “Railway King” excited much interest when I was young, and it may not be out of place to touch upon some of the incidents of his career.
George Hudson was born in 1800, served his apprenticeship in the cathedral city of York and subsequently became a linendraper there and a man of property.
Many years afterwards he is reported to have said that the happiest days of his life passed while he stood behind his counter using the yardstick, a statement which should perhaps only be accepted under reservation. He was undoubtedly a man of a bold and adventurous spirit, possessed of an ambition which soared far above the measuring of calicoes or the retailing of ribbons; but perhaps the observation was tinged by the environment of later and less happy days when his star had set, his kingly reign come to an
end, and when possibly vain regrets had embittered his existence. It was, I should imagine, midst the fierceness of the strife and fury of the mania times, when his powerful personality counted for so much, that he reached the zenith of his happiness.
