Blood on the Tracks: A History of Railway Crime in Britain (14 page)

A Cooke and Wheatstone electric telegraph apparatus as used by the Great Western Railway around 1850.

The trial began on 12 March 1845 at Aylesbury and it excited enormous interest. The evidence suggested that Tawell had somehow managed to place some prussic acid in the stout that Sarah was drinking and it was that poison which had caused her death. On the third day the jury retired to consider their verdict and they took just half an hour to make the decision that Tawell was guilty. Although this was not entirely unexpected the verdict was met with oohs and aahs, and it seems that Tawell, as has been the case with other male murderers, had elicited the adoration of some of the females present in the public area of the court who wept openly and loudly when the sentence of death was pronounced on their hero.

On 28 March Tawell was hanged at Aylesbury. It is unlikely that he would have been found guilty in a modern court on the strength of the evidence
presented. However, the case has retained some fame, less perhaps for the nature of the murder itself than for the fact that Tawell was the first murderer to be apprehended by the authorities using the high-speed communications capability which had just become available courtesy of Cooke and Wheatstone’s electric telegraph. Since the Great Western Railway played something of a pioneering role as far as the electric telegraph is concerned, if it had been another company that Tawell had used to make the journeys to and from the scene of the murder he might have got away with it.

Plaque to William Terriss. He was a popular actor murdered by an insane and unemployed fellow actor outside Covent Garden underground station. His ghost is said to haunt the station itself. 

W
henever questions are raised concerning the thrusting entrepreneurs who pioneered the development of the major railway companies in the nineteenth century, the name of George Hudson invariably crops up. The popular perception is that he was an unscrupulous and unprincipled egomaniac who enriched himself and made paupers of others who invested their hopes and, of course, their money, in his various railway companies. The implication is that he did this through business activities which, if perhaps not always strictly illegal, were certainly unethical. Here we will outline the apparently inexorable rise of Hudson until the ‘kingdom’ he had created imploded and dragged him down, the fall as so often happens being far more rapid than the climb to wealth and fame.

Hudson was born in 1800 at Howsham, a small settlement between York and Malton, the fifth son of the family. His father was a tenant farmer who was moderately well off. His father and mother died before he was ten and Hudson seems to have resented John, his eldest brother, taking over as head of the family. He probably found life at home uncongenial and he left and moved to York as soon as possible.

He had no education to speak of but was remarkably confident and self-possessed. He quickly obtained employment at a draper’s shop in the city. He must have made a good impression because he was only twenty when he was invited to become a partner in the business and shortly after that he married his partner’s sister. The marriage was a happy one. His wife supported him by simply letting him get on with his business affairs and he therefore benefited by knowing that he had a solid domestic base for his life.

In 1827 Hudson inherited a large amount of money from a great-uncle. This episode has excited the interest of Hudson’s biographers who have noted that he was never close to the man before, and indeed the suggestion has been made that he took advantage of his great-uncle’s mental confusion to have the will changed so that he became the main beneficiary. The sum involved was about
£
30,000, a princely figure and one which was of defining importance in Hudson’s life because he now had the kind of money which, if used astutely, would garner him further wealth. Now a couple of years shy of thirty, Hudson was among the richest men in York. It was about this time that he decided to become involved in the local politics of the city.

There is little doubt that many people viewed Hudson as a bad-tempered, quarrelsome, boorish and opinionated upstart, poorly educated and inexperienced. He was on the receiving end of snide comments about his humble origins and especially about the money he had suddenly come into. If such behaviour needled him, which it probably did, he was canny enough not to show it.

His response was to develop the persona of a plain-speaking, somewhat dogmatic Yorkshireman who valued common sense and hard work more highly than breeding and the sounding of his aitches. He developed very effective rhetorical skills which served him well in the rough and tumble of debate, both in the York political scene and later in the national Parliamentary political arena. He was a Conservative by party as well as being conservative by nature, and he spoke and voted consistently in opposition to proposals for social and political reform.

Money, as we all know, speaks, and while Hudson may have engendered animosity in York he was able to number himself among a group of local businessmen who set up the York Union Bank, of which he became a director. This was a useful development because this bank was to provide the finance for some of Hudson’s railway schemes. The York Union Bank was associated with the prestigious Glyn’s Bank of London, the chairman of which was George Carr Glyn who was keen on the promotion of new railway schemes and who proved a powerful ally to Hudson over the years.

Hudson had early learned the truth that it was who you knew and not what you knew that counted. He astutely developed relationships with some of those who would now be described as ‘movers and shakers’, including George and Robert Stephenson who by the mid-1830s were already prominent in railway circles for their developing skills in engineering.

Two early lines had indicated to a waiting and watching public the potential of railways for moving goods and minerals, reducing transport costs and, to a lesser extent, carrying passengers as well as producing good dividends for those investing in them. These lines were the Stockton & Darlington which started operations in 1825 and even more so the Liverpool & Manchester
which opened in 1830. The success of these led to the creation of great numbers of additional schemes and proposals over the next few decades.

By no means did all of these proposals see the light of day, but those that did materialise did so in a largely unplanned and haphazard manner, and with no suggestion in the early days that the railways should be developed systematically even on a regional let alone a national basis. At this stage they were largely being built to further the interests of the business communities in the places they served, and were also often financed by the same people.

Hudson was to be a major player in the process of creating large and strong companies which came to dominate the railway industry, and also in the associated process whereby investment in railway companies was opened out to embrace a far wider range of people. These investors often had no direct business or local interest in the railways concerned. Some were simply speculators wanting quick, high returns while others were looking for a regular and reliable source of income and were often prepared to invest their life savings in order to do so.

Hudson wanted to make York into a major railway centre and in 1836 he became the largest subscriber to and chairman of a proposed York & North Midland Railway which, in conjunction with other lines in which he had an interest, would provide two possible through routes to London, albeit rather circuitous ones. York was somewhat in the doldrums at this time and Hudson reasoned that railways would provide the local economy with a much-needed fillip, not least because they would reduce the price of coal in the city and even possibly allow it to become a centre of manufacturing like the booming woollen towns in the West Riding. Obviously he saw business possibilities for himself in these developments.

The following year saw Hudson become the first Tory Lord Mayor of York, arousing envy and vilification in equal quantities as he did so. His enemies were fond of referring to him as ‘the spouter of fustian’ thereby calling attention to his origins as a tradesman, but Hudson was on a roll and quite prepared to mix it verbally with any or all of his enemies. In fact his public attacks on political enemies were scurrilous even by the standards of the time, and he was happy to make his political differences personal ones as well.

He surrounded himself with a clique of toadies and placemen who, because they owed their positions to his patronage, almost fell over themselves to do whatever he wanted them to do. There is an expression to the effect that the higher the monkey climbs the tree, the more it shows its bottom. His enemies would have been mindful of this charming old adage. Doubtless Hudson was as well, but at this time in his burgeoning career he probably thought he was fireproof.

Hudson made quite a splash as Lord Mayor and the local Tories wanted him to continue. This was against the rules because his term as an alderman
had run out and only aldermen were eligible to be considered for the role of Lord Mayor. They bent the rules by appointing him as an alderman again, whereupon he was quickly re-elected as Lord Mayor. This caused a furore among his opponents and an enquiry declared that this action was illegal. However, the enquiry was so long-winded that Hudson decided to brazen it out and had actually finished his second term as Lord Mayor before it was published. By that time he could not have cared less anyway. This somewhat shady episode tells us something about the man and his essential pragmatism.

The York & North Midland Railway proved to be a great success but it is interesting to note that at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in 1840 some of those present raised concerns about the company’s bookkeeping methods. They were in a minority because most shareholders were highly gratified by the large dividend which Hudson had announced, but they did suggest that professional auditors should be appointed to scrutinise the accounts. Hudson contemptuously swept this proposal aside by telling them that the directors of the company on their behalf had access whenever required to the company’s books and they were perfectly satisfied with the way things were being done. Although the matter was dropped, could it be that a few shareholders knew or at least suspected that Hudson may have been cooking the books?

Hudson’s career as a railway entrepreneur was striding forward as he gained important roles in many new companies that were being set-up. For example, the North Midland Railway Company was having financial problems and Hudson offered to bale it out. The price of this was a place for Hudson on the board of directors with complete autonomy on management and financial matters. He had the Midas touch; no sooner was he at the helm of the North Midland than the shares of the company began to rise impressively. The man had vision, no one can argue with that.

Probably his most inspirational move ever was to mastermind the merger of four companies into the Midland Railway with himself as its chairman. This occurred in 1844 and was the first of many such amalgamations and consolidations over the next decades, although these were carried out by other ‘railway barons’. Historians generally consider these mergers to have had a beneficial economic effect and that they were necessary. Hudson should be given the credit for having the foresight to recognise that big was beautiful in railway terms at the time, although it is unlikely that his primary motivation was the long-term welfare of Britain’s developing railway system.