George Hudson (1800–1871) the “Railway King”, politician and financier, was at various times Lord Mayor of York and MP for Sunderland. He was a key player in the Railway Mania of the 1840s, and is remembered kindly in Whitby for having done much to develop the town as a tourist resort. His accounting methods were dubious and eventually declared illegal, paying dividends to investors out of capital instead of profits – something technically known as a Ponzi scheme.