Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland. Joseph Tatlow
the war, as since then, owing to Government control, non-division of through traffic and curtailment of accounts, the actual receipts earned by individual companies are not published, and, indeed, are not known.
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.
Whilst conducting in York his linendraper business, a relation died and left him money. The railway boom had then begun. He flung his yardstick behind him and entered the railway fray. The Liverpool and Manchester line and its wonderful success—it paid ten per cent.—greatly impressed the public mind, and the good people of York determined they would have a railway to London.
A committee was appointed to carry out the project. On this committee Mr. Hudson was placed, and it was mainly owing to his energy and skill that the scheme came to a successful issue. He was rewarded by being made chairman of the company.
This was his entrance into the railway world where, for a time, he was monarch. He must have been a man of shrewdness and capacity. It is recorded that he acquired the land for the York to London railway at an average cost of £1,750 per mile whilst that of the North Midland cost over £5,000.
On the 1st July, 1840, this linendraper of York had the proud pleasure of seeing the first train from York to London start on its journey.
From this achievement he advanced to others. He and his friends obtained the lease, for thirty-one years, of a rival line, which turned out a great financial success. His enterprise and energy were boundless.
It is said that his bold spirit, his capacity for work and his great influence daunted his most determined opponents. For instance, the North Midland railway, part predecessor of the Midland, was involved in difficulty. He appeared before the shareholders, offered, if his advice and methods were adopted, to guarantee double the then dividend. His offer was accepted and he was made chairman, and from that position became chairman, and for a time dictator, of the amalgamated Midland system. Clearly his business abilities were great; his reforms were bold and drastic, and success attended his efforts. He soon became the greatest railway authority in England. For a time the entire railway system in the north was under his control, and the confidence reposed in him was unbounded. He was the lion of the day: princes, peers and prelates, capitalists and fine ladies sought his society, paid homage to his power, besought his advice and lavished upon him unstinted adulation.
In 1845 the railway mania was at its height. It is said that during two or three months of that year as much as £100,000 per week were expended in advertisements in connection with railway promotions, railway meetings and railway matters generally. Scarcely credible this, but so it is seriously stated. Huge sums were wasted in the promotion and construction of British railways in early days, from which, in their excessive capital cost, they suffer now. In the mania period railways sprang into existence so quickly that, to use the words of Robert Stephenson, they “appeared like the realisation of fabled powers or the magician’s wand.” The Illustrated London News of the day said: “Railway speculation has become the sole object of the world—cupidity is aroused and roguery shields itself under its name, as a more safe and rapid way of gaining its ends. Abroad, as well as at home, has it proved the rallying point of all rascality—the honest man is carried away by the current and becomes absorbed in the vortex; the timid, the quiet, the moral are, after some hesitation, caught in the whirlpool and follow those whom they have watched with pity and derision.”
Powers were granted by Parliament in the year 1845 to construct no less than 2,883 miles of new railway at an expenditure of about £44,000,000; and in the next year (1846) applications were made to Parliament for authority to raise £389,000,000 for the construction of further lines. These powers were granted to the extent of 4,790 miles at a cost of about £120,000,000.
Soon there came a change; disaster followed success; securities fell; dividends diminished or disappeared altogether or, as was in some cases discovered, were paid out of capital, and disappointment and ruin followed. King Hudson’s methods came under a fierce fire of criticism; adulation was succeeded by abuse and he was disgraced and dethroned. A writer of the day said, “Mr. Hudson is neither better nor worse than the morality of his time.” From affluence he came to want, and in his old age a fund was raised sufficient to purchase him an annuity of £600 a year.
About this time, that most useful Institution the Railway Clearing House received Parliamentary sanction. The Railway Clearing System Act 1850 gave it statutory recognition. Its functions have been defined thus: “To settle and adjust the receipts arising from railway traffic within, or partly within, the United Kingdom, and passing over more than one railway within the United Kingdom, booked or invoiced at throughout rates of fares.” The system had then been in existence, in a more or less informal way, for about eight years. Mr. Allport, on one occasion, said that whilst he was with the Birmingham and Derby railway (before he became general manager of the Midland) the process