Henry Tuck

History of Financial Advice Collection. The enthusiasm for railway investment in the mid-1840s generated demand for information. As well as promoting a vibrant, if in many cases somewhat ephemeral, railway press, the “mania” also inspired many manuals for investors. One of the most successful was Henry Tuck’s Railway Shareholder’s Manual, which went through nine editions between 1845 and 1848. Tuck, who published the Railway Times, one of the most popular railway papers, aimed with his Manual to furnish investors with an ever-growing supply of information (the eighth edition was nearly four times the size of the earlier editions), ranging from abstracts of relevant legislation, lists of railway bills currently in parliament, and tables of passenger traffic, to detailed statistics on each railway in operation. In a lively preface, Tuck took aim at those who questioned railways as an investment—chief among them The Times—arguing “that nothing but the most absurd prejudice, the most stupid obstinacy, or the most corrupt venality, can be opposed to the Railway system.” Tuck was keen to keep British capital invested at home. Though this edition also contained a short section on foreign railways, Tuck warned his readers to exercise caution, arguing that “the Prussian, Hanoverian, Dutch, and Belgian lines will never pay a dividend of 2 per cent.”… (más)