Thomas Cook Read online

  There was now a line all the way to London from Leicester – the population had grown to a staggering 48,167, of which about 3,000 men and women were employed in the hosiery factories, and 600 in the more recent shoe and boot industry. The city, according to the Temperance Messenger, contained 700 spirit and beer shops and public houses, ‘great numbers of dying drunkards . . . [and] a greater proportion of prostitutes than any town beyond the precincts of the metropolis’. Other urban evils included a high mortality rate, slum dwellings and bad drainage – a problem exacerbated by the flatness of the area.

  Living in the heart of a city did not mean that Thomas forgot his four years in the market garden in Melbourne or the rural pleasures of growing vegetables and flowers. He started the Cottage Gardener, a ‘periodical of considerable size, which attracted great interest’.13 Since the Royal Horticultural Society had been formed in 1804, various magazines had been launched, including the Gardener’s Chronicle in 1841 and the Horticultural Register.14 The most influential of the garden writers, John Claudius Loudon, a self-made Scot, carried on the Gardeners’ Magazine for seventeen years.15 Although too expensive for most gardeners, it did inspire local magazines, such as Thomas’s in Leicester.

  Gardening was a consuming pastime in the new suburbs, and most people tried to follow the latest fashions. Contrarily, Thomas promoted the charm of small, simple productive gardens with honeysuckle, wild roses, strawberries and vegetables. The Gardener was not mentioned in Botanico-Periodicum Huntianum nor acknowledged as a predecessor in the better-known magazine called the Cottage Gardener, founded in London by George William Johnson in 1848. Alas, no copy of Thomas’s magazine, nor his Garden Allotment Advocate, survives.16 Anxious to prop up the new allotment movement, Thomas also helped found the Leicester Allotment Society and in 1842 made a vain appeal for money for members to purchase potato seeds at cost price.17 As well as doing everything he could to help the poor grow their own food, on another occasion, to alleviate the hunger in Leicester, he bought cheap potatoes in Northamptonshire and sold them at cost price. But his supplies were not up to the samples so he could not compete successfully with the established potato merchants, and his efforts came to nothing.

  Just before Christmas 1842, Thomas gathered the information and printed the Leicestershire Almanack, Directory Guide to Leicester and Advertiser, priced at one shilling. Its 170 pages were packed with precise information, including the names and addresses of the Dissenting chapels and the times of services.

  His output would soon rival that of Winks, who had become a printer and distributor of Baptist publications, as well as being the unpaid minister of the Carley Street chapel.18 Thomas said that his own works printed and distributed ‘at least half a million tracts on Temperance and kindred subjects’ plus Baptist devotional works and hymn19 books with such words as:

  Six hundred thousand drunkards march

  To wretchedness and hell

  While loud laments and tears and groans

  In dismal chorus swell.

  The National Temperance Hymn Book and

  Rechabite Songster of 1843, published by Thomas Cook

  In addition, Thomas printed ‘the British Building Societies Record, edited by Mr McArthur’, and the Temperance Gazette for ‘Mr Kendrick of West Bromwich’. He also began a registry for servants, a registry for lodging and boarding houses and a guide to Temperance hotels in Britain. Laying aside his hammer and tools for good, he somehow found the capital for the presses, inks and stocks of paper, so he could become a full-time professional printer. His skill in layouts, typography and printing generally was exceptional.

  Lack of money made thrift and long hours of work necessities. Just as his family home doubled up as a boarding house or Temperance hotel, John Mason’s schooling did not prevent him from earning his keep. His fees of a few pence per week were paid to a preparatory school, but he was also a ‘printer’s devil’ and helped with the laborious end-of-month job of rolling, wrapping and addressing hundreds of periodicals.20

  While juggling his Temperance activities and promoting train outings, Thomas relied on subscriptions and from printing magazines and books. The numbers of periodicals and sheets which had the stamp of ‘T. Cook, Printers, Granby Street, Leicester’ on them was growing. He was also producing the Temperance Messengers, the Children’s Temperance Magazine, the Anti-Smoker and Progressive Temperance Reformer.

  But it was not all work. In the summer of 1843, Thomas wrote about an excursion of teetotallers to the Peak of Derbyshire and parts of Yorkshire where he could ‘breathe uncontaminated air’. This took place just before the family and shop moved to 26 Granby Street in the centre of Leicester, advertised as a ‘Temperance Commercial Boarding House’ and a ‘Cheap Printing Office’. One advertisement reminded readers: ‘Commercial Gentlemen, Visitors &c are respectfully informed that Thomas Cook has opened his Establishment as a Temperance Commercial Boarding House, where Refreshments may be had at any hour of the day, and good sleeping Accommodation is provided. Thomas Cook is the general Wholesale and Retail Agent for Dawson’s Celebrated Turkey Aroma, the best substitute for Coffee ever invented. Agent for the Temperance Provident Institution.’

  Thomas’s mother, influenced by her favourite son, gave herself more options by turning her back on the country for the bustling metropolis of Derby, where she ran a Temperance hotel. Putting her two widowhoods behind her, she married for a third time, becoming Mrs Tivey. Her grandson, John Mason, came to stay with her, often for extensive periods.

  Gambling, like drink, was seen as evil. Baptists did not even allow raffles, let alone lotteries, to be held to raise funds. To entice children away from the annual races in 1844, Thomas arranged what he called a ‘Monster Excursion of Juveniles’ for children attending Sunday schools to travel from Leicester to Derby. John Mason wrote, ‘My public career as a Personal Conductor commenced in 1844 as a small boy with a long wand assisting the guidance of 500 other children from Leicester to Syston by special train – for five miles; then a two mile walk across fields to Mount Sorrel Hills for an afternoon’s picnic and back the same route to Leicester.’ Thomas invited Sunday school teachers to take their schools to Derby, where their counterparts would ‘open their school-rooms and provide tea for those of the same religious denominations’.

  As at least 5,000 children and teachers booked, the event had to be spread over two days. On the first day 3,000 children were conveyed in every kind of vehicle that could be mustered, including a number of new coal wagons: ‘The ordinary rolling-stock was inadequate to the occasion; and, with the wagon supplements filled to their utmost capacity, we still left behind 1,500 little enthusiasts for a second day . . . [all] were conveyed the thirty miles and back for one shilling adults, and sixpence children, all scholars coming under the latter classification.’ Other Sunday school outings followed. These coincided with restrictions imposed by the Railway Act of 1844, pushed through by Gladstone, then still a Tory and vice-president of the Board of Trade. Monopolies and the duplication of tracks were discouraged and each company had to run at least one train a day in each direction which stopped at every station – known as the ‘Parliamentary’. Most importantly, Gladstone imposed safety standards, limited fares to no more than one penny per mile, and stopped passengers travelling in open ‘tub’ carriages, like cattle. Other facilities, such as lavatories, though, were not generally introduced for forty years.21

  One of the most significant occurrences for Thomas in that eventful year in Leicester was the visit by Silk Buckingham, who addressed a Temperance meeting. In his fiery talk, Silk Buckingham lashed out at beer-houses and contrasted the drunkenness of Christian nations with the sobriety of the Muslim countries.22 Thomas valued him as his chief adviser for future tours to the Holy Land. These ‘Eastern Tours’ would take twenty-four years to materialise, but his path to Egypt and Palestine had begun that night in Leicester.

  Thomas enthusiastically reported Silk Buckingham’s talk in the Temperance new
spapers which still flew from his presses, including the National Temperance Magazine. He also made time to produce a new magazine, the Anti-Smoker, which he described as ‘the first periodical organ of anti-tobaccoism the world ever knew’. But the tobacco leaf was becoming as much the national food as beef and beer,23 so his magazine limped on for just three issues, finishing in mid-1843. Despite accepting defeat and putting his energies elsewhere, Thomas seems to have avoided those who smoked heavily, such as Winks. Through their involvement in the Baptist chapel, their paths must have crossed, yet there are no records of them together in Leicester. This split may have been caused by Thomas’s lonely fight against smoking while Winks was wedded to his pipe. ‘The barbarous habit’ began after Sir Walter Raleigh’s return from Virginia, USA. By the end of the eighteenth century the odour of tobacco-tinctured saliva and stale tobacco on clothes was even more familiar,24 as smoking came to be listed among the accomplishments of a gentleman together with dancing, riding, hunting and card-playing.

  In 1845, with courage and a little temerity, Thomas advertised a commercial tour. From being a gardener, carpenter, preacher, publisher, printer and boarding house proprietor, he was now setting up a tour business with a trial trip to the thriving port of Liverpool. Although the fare did not include food or lodgings – a selection of hotels and inns was advertised in the handbook, but no accommodation was booked in advance – it was really the inauguration of Cook’s Tours and would be a dress rehearsal for hundreds of thousands to follow. The 1841 Leicester to Loughborough trip had initiated him as an excursionist but that, like all the other tours until 1845, had been on a non-profit basis. Train trips would now augment Thomas’s income. Soon there would be more expenses, as, at last, ten years after the death of baby Henry, Marianne was pregnant.

  TWELVE

  1845: The Commercial Trips, Liverpool,

  North Wales and Scotland

  It was terribly wet during the summer of 1845. But on 10 August, as dawn slowly broke over Leicester Railway Station, the clouds rolled back. The railway platform was jammed with about 300 men, women and children bedecked in their best clothes, most young, gay and so excited by the trip, a carnival atmosphere and much laughter. Only a few looked anxious or weary because of lack of sleep. Thomas had sternly warned that ‘parties will have to be “wide awake” at an early hour . . . Promptitude on the part of the Railway Company calls for the same from passengers.’ Most eyes were turned to the left, eager to catch sight of the much-anticipated train. Just before 5a.m. a flutter of smoke could be seen on the horizon, and the railway engine came roaring towards them. Coming into the station, it drowned all conversation as it squealed to a halt, releasing gusts of steam.

  For many people waiting on the station, this round trip to Lime Street, Liverpool, would be their first long railway journey. Liverpool with its huge docks was then the port for ships sailing to North America and the glamorous gateway to nearby North Wales. Each customer had paid a fare of fifteen shillings for first class, or ten shillings for second class; there was no third class, as the journey was too long to have people in open carriages. Thomas was reaping the reward of his reputation from years of shepherding people in the cause of Temperance. Organising the trip, though, had swallowed up months of his time, as some companies had turned down the idea of low-priced fares for group bookings.1

  On top of the basic ticket, many customers purchased four-shilling supplementary tickets either for the special steamer excursion from Liverpool, which was to sail under the Menai Bridge and up the Straits to the medieval fortress castles of Caernarvon and Bangor in North Wales, or for the exhausting side trip of climbing Mt Snowdon. Thomas was overwhelmed at the response to all the advertisements. The idea of the trip ‘created such a sensation that at Leicester the tickets issued . . . were in many instances re-sold at double those rates. The rolling-stock of the company was not adequate to the demand, and a second trip [with 800 passengers] had to be improvised a fortnight later to satisfy the public.’

  At Liverpool that historic morning the passengers climbed one by one into the stationary train. Nobody pushed or rushed. Among those shepherding the crowd was ten-year-old John Mason. Then the doors were slammed, the whistles blew and the carriages were moving, pulled by the steam engine with surprising velocity to Nottingham and Derby, where more passengers boarded, making a total of 1,200. The train ran via Normanton, through the Yorkshire and Lancashire valleys to Manchester, and then over the Manchester to Liverpool line, a distance of about 170 miles.

  On this occasion, as so often in the future when people travelled to special events, they wore their Sunday best. Some even dressed as if for a carnival or wedding, even though soot from the engine blew back into the carriages and caused smudges on clothes. A side effect of up-to-date, fashion-conscious passengers was of female dresses taking up extra space. Having purchased a ticket, people expected to have a whole seat on a train, and not have to share it with the voluminous skirt of a woman sitting beside them. As seats were narrow and hard, fashion caused much inconvenience for passengers on this and other long journeys. Full skirts, worn over a large number of starched and horsehair petticoats, took up a lot of room, as did the new crinolines. Sleeves, too, were puffed up and could intrude.

  During the Welsh tour sightseers often outnumbered the town’s permanent population. As well as the thrill of being in infrequently visited destinations, the passengers also discovered the inconveniences. A group of over a thousand English men and women arriving en masse was like an invasion. In Caernarvon, ‘intense interest was excited amongst the Welsh people by the appearance of so large a party of English ladies and gentlemen. We spent a night and a day amongst the mountains . . . the great feat being to gain the summit of Snowdon’ – scaling the highest peak in England and Wales at 3,560 feet could be perilous.

  It was over 500 years since Edward I had led his ruthless incursions against the Welsh, but they had preserved so much of their culture and language that Thomas had difficulty in hiring an English-speaking guide. But he rejoiced in a silent message in the ruined castles and monasteries, writing that he felt ‘gratitude that the tyrannies they sheltered are no longer oppressing us, and regret that with all our increased facilities for amassing wealth, we have no charities in the present time, at all comparable to them’.2

  A second excursion was arranged for 800 passengers the following fortnight. Again there was a ‘monster’ train, a steamboat excursion and a trip to take visitors to the wild areas of the barren but beautiful summit of Snowdon. And again they ascended on foot – as Thomas called it, by ‘Shanks’s naggie’.

  Thomas’s profit is difficult to gauge. It seems that the trip was a shared project with the Midland Railways, which took much of the responsibility, and that Thomas’s task may have been to find the passengers and produce the handbook. Unlike a year later, he may not have been financially responsible. In the newspapers it is the Midland Railways that was given the credit for organising the trips, not Thomas.3 Travel from Leicester to Liverpool then meant buying three tickets from three competing railway companies – the Midland, the Manchester & Leeds and the Liverpool & Manchester lines. Now Thomas produced one ticket to cover the whole journey – rather as happens nowadays. He later said that these two trips to Liverpool were the first excursions with tickets with the ‘division of the fares through the Railway Clearing House’. He appears to have received a commission of 5 per cent from each of the four railway companies that had issued the reduced-priced tickets for the complicated journey. Out of this he had to deduct advertising and printing costs, including the expenses of organising the journey.

  Thomas’s reputation from four years as an ‘Excursion-Agent’ now paid dividends. He knew the difficulties of travel, understanding the need of reconnoitring a route, issuing guide books and finding destinations which were exciting or romantic. Aware of competitors, Thomas usually managed to add an extra dimension, such as history, which he soon discovered made places saleable. With the sk
ill of a showman, he wove historical facts into his guide books, livening up the itineraries, descriptions of destinations and lists of hotels and boarding houses.

  On his second trip, from the heights of Snowdon, Thomas looked out across the haze ‘towards Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis’ and the magic world of Walter Scott and Robbie Burns. Scotland, the romance of it all! The tartan, kilts, wild scenery and bagpipes beckoned. Military music was part of many cultures, but the Highlanders had the tradition of pipes and ballad singers exciting warriors to fight. Gaelic battle songs, Scottish bagpipers and bands playing regimental marches, such as ‘Cock o’ the North’, were now penetrating into England. Scotland had become, like the Lake District, a fashionable destination. Unable to go on Grand Tours to the continent because of decades of war, such large numbers of English people were flocking north each year that Sir Walter Scott had remarked, ‘Every London citizen makes Loch Lomond his washpot and throws his shoe over Ben Nevis.’4

  Much of the vogue for Scotland then emanated from the legend of Ossian, which was related in a lengthy poem of that name and was almost a cult in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even Napoleon Bonaparte recited its lines. The poem was either written by an ancient Scottish bard or forged by the Scotsman Macpherson. Its lack of authenticity did not detract from its romantic image and it was sometimes connected with prestigious visitors to Scotland such as Dr Johnson, James Boswell and Felix Mendelssohn.

  Thomas made a resolution to get to Scotland the next year or ‘know the reason why’.

  THIRTEEN

  Scotland

  The vision of the picturesque Highlands remained with Thomas. In 1843 he had followed the dramatic events in Scotland when 470 ministers, wanting independence from government control, had resigned their livings and formed a new denomination, the ‘Wee Free’ church, the free Kirk – it was a battle for the soul of Scotland. During Christmas and New Year 1844/5 Thomas saw the changes for himself, when he made his much-longed-for trip north after a sales tour in Lancashire to promote his new National Temperance Magazine. In contrast to Preston, where he had been shown the spot where Dicky Turner had first uttered the word ‘teetotal’ – he arrived in Edinburgh for Hogmanay, which was celebrated with uproarious joviality.1