George Hudson payment of 12 shillings and 6 pence recorded in the Howsham poor book as being “received of George Hudson for bastardry”. Hudson was apprenticed to Bell and Nicholson, a firm of drapers in College Street, York. He finished his apprenticeship in 1820, was taken on as a tradesman, and given a share in the business early in 1821. On 17 July that year he married Nicholson's daughter Elizabeth. When Bell retired, the firm became Nicholson and Hudson. By 1827 the company was the largest drapery, indeed the largest business, in York. In 1827, his great-uncle Matthew Botrill fell ill and
George Hudson would offer a better through route to London. Edmund Denison MP was keen to promote a faster link from London to York via Doncaster and formed the London and York Railway issuing a prospectus in May 1844. Early in 1845 he and Hudson had a very public argument on Derby station (about raising capital) resulting in a serious rivalry. Hudson and the Midland Railway opposed the GNR in parliament and his involvement with the Eastern Counties Railway was designed to frustrate the GNR plans and build a competing route via Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Eventually Hudson realised he could not prevent