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 these companies were left in a difficult position with falling revenues, an economic depression and little scope for future shareholder dividends. In York the City Council led by George Leeman were demanding money for the Lendal Bridge project and many of Hudson's allies were unseated at local elections that year. The shareholders that had so fulsomely praised Hudson for the large dividends paid now lined up against him. In the Midland Railway meeting of 15 February 1849 there were calls for a committee of inquiry to be set up which Hudson managed to quash by threatening to resign. Five days