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 later at the meeting of the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway two shareholders Horatio Love and Robert Prance revealed a number of shares had been sold to the company at a value far in excess of what they were actually worth and the beneficiary was Hudson. This time the call for a committee of inquiry to be set up was successful. The Eastern Counties Railway Annual General Meeting was on the 28 February and Hudson decided not to attend. Vice chair David Waddington faced the wrath of the shareholders (who had received a very small dividend) and promptly blamed the