Thomas Cook, was was born in Melbourne, South Derbyshire, on 22nd November, 1808 leaving school at the age of ten to work as a gardener's boy on Lord Melbourne's estate.
The First Signs of a Travel Career
Cook attended the local Methodist Sunday School and was
described as "an earnest, active, devoted, young Christian". He soon
became a teacher at the Sunday School and eventually was appointed as its
superintendent. At seventeen Thomas joined the local Temperance Society and
over the next few years spent his spare-time campaigning against the consumption
of alcohol.
In 1827 Cook abandoned his apprenticeship to become an
itinerant village missionary, on a salary of £36 a year. His job was to spread the Word by preaching,
distributing tracts, and setting up Sunday schools throughout the south midland
counties. Thus began his career in
travel.
Cook married in 1833 and became an active member of the
local Temperance Society making speeches and publishing pamphlets pointing out
the dangers of alcohol consumption. He also arranged large group picnics where
participants were, according to the Temperance Messenger, sustained with
"biscuits, buns and ginger beer". In 1840 Cook decided to make a
career out of his temperance beliefs and founded the Children's Temperance
Magazine.
The First ‘Package’ Holiday
In 1841 Cook had the idea of arranging an eleven-mile rail
excursion from Leicester to a Temperance Society meeting in Loughborough on the
newly extended Midland Railway. Cook charged his customers one shilling and
this included the cost of the rail ticket and the food on the journey. The
venture was a great success and Cook decided to start his own business running
rail excursions.
He described this as ‘the starting point of a career of
labour and pleasure which has expanded into … a mission of goodwill and benevolence
on a grand scale’
The First ‘Brochure’
Cook set up as a bookseller and printer in Leicester. He
specialized in temperance literature and opened up temperance hotels in Derby
and Leicester and continued to organize excursions. In 1845, having won a reputation as an
entrepreneur who could obtain cheap rates from the railway companies for large
parties, he undertook his first profit-making excursion - to Liverpool,
Caernarfon, and Mount Snowdon. Cook wrote a handbook which resembled in
essential respects the modern tour operator's brochure.
In 1846 Cook took 500 people from Leicester on a tour of
Scotland that involved visits to Glasgow and Edinburgh. One of his greatest
achievements was to arrange for over 165,000 people to attend the Great
Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851.
The First Ticketing Problems!
Cook's travel business was badly damaged in 1862 when the
Scottish railway companies refused to issue any more group tickets for Cook's
popular tours north of the border. Cook instead decided to take advantage of
new rail links to take large numbers of tourists to the continent. In his first
year he arranged for 2000 visitors to travel France and 500 to Switzerland. In
1864 Cook began taking tourists to Italy.
The First Mass-Market Backlash
Cook was charged with swamping Europe with "everything
that is low-bred, vulgar and ridiculous". And others complained about the
bad taste of taking tourists to the battlefields of the American Civil War.
Cook moved his business to London. His son John managed the
London office of the company that was now known as Thomas Cook & Son and helped
to expand the company by opening offices in Manchester, Brussels, and Cologne.
In 1869 the company arranged tours of Egypt and the Holy Land, something he
described as "the greatest event of my tourist life".
The First Boardroom Revolt
Thomas Cook had a difficult relationship with his son and
only made him a partner in 1871. His reluctance was probably due to disputes
between the two men, mainly over financial matters. Unlike Thomas, John
believed that business should be kept separate from religion and philanthropy.
He also upset his father by being more adventurous in investing money. He
opened a hotel at Luxor and refurbished the Nile steamers of the khedive, from
whom he obtained the passenger agency, thus helping to make Egypt a safer and
more attractive destination.
The First Round The World Tour
By 1872 Thomas Cook & Son was able to offer a 212 day
Round the World Tour for 200 guineas. The journey included a steamship across
the Atlantic, a stage coach from the east to the west coast of America, a
paddle steamer to Japan, and an overland journey across China and India.
Thomas continued to disagree with his son about the way the
company should be run. After a serious dispute in 1878, Thomas decided to
retire to Thorncroft, the large house which he had built on the outskirts of
Leicester, and allow John Cook to run the business on his own.
And A Sad Ending
Cook led a lonely life after the deaths of his unmarried
daughter Annie in 1880 and his wife four years later. He continued to travel,
however, making his final pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1888. Much of his time
and money were spent, as they had been throughout his career, in work for the
Baptist church, the temperance movement, and other charities. He did not attend
the firm's silver jubilee celebrations in 1891; whether this was because of
blindness and physical incapacity or because his son John did not want him there is not
clear
Thomas Cook died at Knighton, Leicester, on 18th July 1892.
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