• Name: Hudson, John Corrie
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 1796
• Death Date: 1879

There are 237 coded instances of Hudson - one in 1793, one in 1803 and three in 1808. Then there are no more until 1820, from which point the name appears regularly until the end of the diary. Given this gap and the fact that the name is not particularly unusual, we cannot becertain that the five before 1820 refer to the same person and these remain uncoded.

In 1829 a 'Hudson, R S' begins to appear over the summer. This does not appear to be a meeting with the usual Hudson at the Royal Society but a separate acquaintance, as shown by the entry 'Write to Hudson, R S' (28.7). Then on 10.9 there is 'Call on Hudson (R S), J C Hudson...' (10.9). This is evidence that the main Hudson in the diary has the initials J C - ie, after a series of meetings with the Royal Society member he has to insert the initials of the usual Hudson to distinguish him. 'Hudson, R S' next appears five years later at Charles Babbage's dinner. Hudson R S is in fact James Hudson, who was an assistant secretary at the Royal Society between 1828 and 1835. (There is no Fellow of the Royal Society by the name of Hudson until Robert Hudson is elected in 1834).

John Corrie Hudson (1795–1879), was a chief clerk of the legacy duty office, and is identified as a friend of Godwin's in the DNB entry for Charles Thomas Hudson (1828-1903), his son. There is one letter in the Abinger scans, which is only a scrawled note but is signed J C Hudson. See also Alan Haig's The Victorian Clergy identifies a J.C. Hudson as 'an advanced liberal and, in his youth, the friend of Godwin, Shelley, Tooke and others of that circle'. He was chief clerk in legacy at Somerset House and published The Parent's Hand-Book in 1842 (Hudson was not a member of the clergy but Haig is quoting him as someone who wrote about the clergy as a career path open to young men). That his dates are 1796-1879 gives further evidence for uncoding the times that the name appears before 1820, when Hudson is too young. Hudson published various works about making wills and, in 1823, A Letter to the Mistresses of Families: on the Cruelty of Employing Children In the Odious, Dangerous, and Often Fatal Task of Sweeping Chimnies...

See also Hudson Gurney (1775-1864), antiquary and banker, has a DNB entry and is part of the Norfolk banking Quaker family of which Godwin knows several members.

• DNB
• http://royalsociety.org/Past-Officers/
• Alan Haig, The Victorian Clergy (London: Routledge, 1984). pp. 8-9.

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.