'A vast aggregate of avaricious and flagitious jobbing'? George Hudson and the evolution of early notions of directorial responsibility

The literature suggests that shareholders in the early railway companies were highly dependent upon the honesty and competence of their directors, that there was extensive scope for abuse and that numerous frauds were perpetrated, particularly during the railway mania of 1845-7. George Hudson's fraudulent activities are widely referred to, although the literature is, in general, more concerned with Hudson's manipulations of company accounts than with his misuse of the assets he was able to control as an agent of shareholder interests. At the time, however, Hudson's acts of self-enrichment and his defence of personal responsibility were as important as his accounting manipulations, not least because they posed an important and highly publicized challenge to tentatively formed notions of how directors should act. This paper concentrates on Hudson's dealings with and on behalf of his four major railway companies, analyses his personal transactions and then considers the influence of Hudson's personal frauds and ideas of personal responsibility on the evolution of early, and rather poorly formed, legal conceptions of directorial responsibility.