British Tokens, Tickets and Passes

Manchester & Birmingham Railway, an oval silver engraved ticket, conjoined shields, rev. named (George Hudson, Director, 1842), 25 x 20mm (D & W –; MG –; Swan –). Pierced for wear, very fine and extremely rare
£250-300

George Hudson (1800-71), b. Howsham, E. Yorkshire, was apprenticed to Bell & Nicholson, drapers, in York in 1815. In 1821 he married Elizabeth Nicholson, daughter of one of the partners, receiving a share in the business himself which, by 1827, was one of the largest employers in the city. Utilising a legacy of £30,000 from a great-uncle, he joined the Tory party and, in 1833, took a leading part in the establishment of the York Union Banking Co. That same year he became treasurer of what was to become the York & North Midland Railway Co, formed to construct a railway from York to link up with the Leeds-Selby line. Crucially, he convinced George Stephenson, whom he met for the first time in Whitby in 1835, to route Stephenson’s line from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to London through York, rather than bypassing the city on the way to Leeds. Hudson served three terms as mayor of York and in the early 1840s his influence in the burgeoning railway mania led to the amalgamation of several companies and the formation of the Midland Railway in 1844, by which time Hudson, now dubbed the ‘Railway King’, controlled 1,016 miles of railway track and had £319,835 invested in railway shares. With his new-found wealth Hudson acquired several estates in Yorkshire and was elected MP for Sunderland in 1845, holding the seat until 1859. However, by 1848, Hudson’s practice of paying dividends out of company capital started to undermine his empire and shares in railway companies crashed. Hudson was forced to resign the chairmanship of his companies and in order to flee his creditors went to live in France. Returning to England to fight the 1865 general election for the seat of Whitby, he was arrested and imprisoned in York Castle