Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Thomas Cook was born on November twenty second,
Speaker 1: eighteen oh eight, or two hundred and seventeen years ago today,
Speaker 1: on the day this episode is publishing. Cook founded his
Speaker 1: own travel agency in the nineteenth century, and he's seen
Speaker 1: as one of the founders of the package travel industry.
Speaker 1: At the end of this episode, we talked about the
Speaker 1: company Cook founded and what the business grew involved into,
Speaker 1: and when we recorded the episode, Thomas Cook Group was
Speaker 1: having some financial difficulties. Then in September of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: it collapsed and that left roughly one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand travelers stranded overseas with all their bookings canceled. We
Speaker 1: talked about that a little bit in an installment of Unearthed.
Speaker 1: The following month, Thomas Cook Group's biggest shareholder, Folksin International,
Speaker 1: purchased all the branding and all of its assets and
Speaker 1: they relaunched the business as an online travel agency in
Speaker 1: November of twenty nineteen, and then Polish travel technology company
Speaker 1: East Sky Group acquired the business from Folsen in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. This episode originally came out on July eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy B. Wilson and Tracy.
Speaker 1: We have been traveling a lot lately. I've been traveling
Speaker 1: a whole bunch, and because of that, I just started thinking,
Speaker 1: particularly when we were on our trip to Paris, which
Speaker 1: was booked as a package, about how package travel started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because like I often found myself marveling at the people
Speaker 1: who managed our trips through defined destinations were just handling
Speaker 1: the needs of fifty people who all had differing desires
Speaker 1: and internal clocks and whatnot. As we wandered around in
Speaker 1: a foreign country, and sometimes people got lost and they
Speaker 1: always managed to find them and get I was just
Speaker 1: I marvel at the whole concept. So that made me
Speaker 1: start to think about how this whole thing began. And
Speaker 1: as I dug it did not take very long to
Speaker 1: find the person that most people point to and say,
Speaker 1: this is the person who started it. But I was
Speaker 1: surprised because the man most often referenced as the father
Speaker 1: of the modern travel industry was inspired not by some
Speaker 1: deep seated yearn to go out and explore the world,
Speaker 1: but it was more inspired by his support of the
Speaker 1: Temperance movement and has deeply held religious beliefs. So today
Speaker 1: we were talking about Thomas Cook, but we were also
Speaker 1: talking about his son, John Mason Cook. Modern travelers in
Speaker 1: the UK in particular are probably well acquainted with the
Speaker 1: Cook name is now the name of one of the
Speaker 1: largest travel agencies in the world, if not the largest.
Speaker 1: But their family were really pioneers of this idea of
Speaker 1: a travel agency to manage tourist holidays and put together
Speaker 1: packages that could be sold for all of your needs
Speaker 1: to be attended to. He just buyerr one thing and
Speaker 1: then it's taken care of. Yeah, it didn't start that way.
Speaker 1: That happened incrementally before they got to the buyer one
Speaker 1: thing idea. But really you do see the progression of
Speaker 1: how this concept started and how it started to add
Speaker 1: on different pieces until it became package travel. Thomas Cook
Speaker 1: was born on November twenty second, eighteen o eight, in Derbyshire, England.
Speaker 1: His parents, John and Elizabeth Cook were very poor, and
Speaker 1: John worked as a laborer and died when Thomas was
Speaker 1: just four years old. Elizabeth remarried to James Smithard not
Speaker 1: long after John's death. Thomas's formal education was rather brief.
Speaker 1: He attended school only until the age of ten, and
Speaker 1: at that point he started working as a helper to
Speaker 1: an estate gardener and he worked in that position for
Speaker 1: four years, at which point he became a cabinetry apprentice
Speaker 1: under his uncle John Peg. When young Thomas became an apprentice,
Speaker 1: he also switched religious denominations. Up until the age of fourteen,
Speaker 1: Thomas had attended a Methodist Sunday School and that was
Speaker 1: intended to offer a little bit of a supplemental education
Speaker 1: since he had to go to work full time to
Speaker 1: help the family, and that was a common pattern. Sunday
Speaker 1: schools in England during this time were intended to offer
Speaker 1: children a small amount of ongoing education after they were
Speaker 1: required to join the workforce. Yeah, very different I think
Speaker 1: from what we might think of as Sunday school today.
Speaker 1: Not as much. I mean, certainly there was religious study involved,
Speaker 1: but it was also literally like sort of a standard
Speaker 1: education that was getting conveyed. But though he had been
Speaker 1: attending Methodist Sunday school for four years, at fourteen Thomas
Speaker 1: started attending a Baptist Sunday school. John Peg his new
Speaker 1: person that he was apprenticing under was a Baptist, so
Speaker 1: that may have had some influence in the switch, but
Speaker 1: Thomas's mother also wanted her son to change churches. It
Speaker 1: appears that Thomas was very diligent in his studies at
Speaker 1: this new school, and he eventually started teaching there. He
Speaker 1: was eventually named it superintendent. He hadn't been baptized yet,
Speaker 1: though that didn't happen until February of eighteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: when he was seventeen. Yeah, that kind of ties into
Speaker 1: that idea that Sunday school is not the way we
Speaker 1: would think of Sunday school in like modern America, for example.
Speaker 1: It really was not quite the same deal. And I
Speaker 1: only know Catechism, which is different than other religions Sunday schools,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure I have a very different concept of
Speaker 1: how the whole thing works. Cook's religious devotion eventually supplanted
Speaker 1: his work in cabinetry. After five years as his uncle's apprentice,
Speaker 1: he left that job behind to become a missionary, and
Speaker 1: his new job consisted of traveling from town to town
Speaker 1: in rural England. In each town, he would distribute literature,
Speaker 1: give sermons, and set up a Sunday school there. He
Speaker 1: got paid thirty six pounds annually for the job, and
Speaker 1: that amount was throttled back as he started to receive
Speaker 1: aid from the people that he ministered to. While traveling
Speaker 1: with his work, the twenty year old Cook met a
Speaker 1: young woman named mary Anne Mason, another Sunday school teacher
Speaker 1: who was a year older than Thomas. Thomas and mary
Speaker 1: Anne were sweethearts for four years before they got married
Speaker 1: on March second, eighteen thirty three. That's another thing that
Speaker 1: made me chuckle. In some of the biographical write ups
Speaker 1: of him, people will talk about what a long courtship
Speaker 1: that was. Where it's again in the modern era, not
Speaker 1: so much. Not only did Thomas's bachelor's status change to
Speaker 1: that of husband in eighteen thirty three, he also changed jobs.
Speaker 1: He returned to carpentry. His job as a missionary had
Speaker 1: ended because the church could no longer fund his salary,
Speaker 1: so he moved with Marianne to Market Harborough and opened
Speaker 1: up a shop on January thirteenth, eighteen thirty four. They
Speaker 1: welcomed a son, John Mason Cook. In eighteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: they had another child named Henry, but the second son
Speaker 1: died while still a baby. They didn't have any more
Speaker 1: children until the mid eighteen forties. When their daughter Annie
Speaker 1: was born. In eighteen thirty six, the Cooks took a
Speaker 1: strong stand for temperance. They felt that liquor was causing
Speaker 1: all manner of social problems. This was a pretty popularly
Speaker 1: circulated idea at the time, and they decided that they
Speaker 1: wanted to lead by example in their own lives. So
Speaker 1: they both signed a pledge of temperance, and they also
Speaker 1: vowed that no one who worked for them would have
Speaker 1: access to alcohol while on their property. But Thomas was
Speaker 1: not content to do just that. He started really throwing
Speaker 1: his time and his efforts into promoting temperance. In the
Speaker 1: latter half of the eighteen thirties, Cook reached back to
Speaker 1: his preaching days. At this time, he started to preach
Speaker 1: the importance of temperance and the dangers of alcohol. He
Speaker 1: wrote and distributed pamphlets with these same messages. He also
Speaker 1: started setting up recreational events that were alcohol free. They
Speaker 1: were social gatherings called rational recreation, where the activities were
Speaker 1: wholesome and the hardest liquid serve was ginger beer. He
Speaker 1: also founded a periodical called the Children's Temperance Magazine in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty and it was Cook's temperance efforts and his
Speaker 1: desire to put together activities that would offer fun and
Speaker 1: socializing without alcohol that led him to start setting up
Speaker 1: travel activities. In June of eighteen forty one, while he
Speaker 1: was walking to a Temperance meeting in Lester, near his home,
Speaker 1: he had a bolt of inspiration. He realized that developments
Speaker 1: in transportation that had been part of the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: and in particular railroads, could be used to spread the
Speaker 1: word about Temperance farther than ever before. He was walking
Speaker 1: to a meeting in Leicester when he had this idea,
Speaker 1: and when he got there, Cook outlined his planned the attendees.
Speaker 1: He pitched the plan that they would hire a train
Speaker 1: specifically to get their members to another meeting farther away
Speaker 1: the next month. Everybody thought this was a great idea,
Speaker 1: so he reached out to the Midland Railway to try
Speaker 1: to make the arrangements and they were completely open to it.
Speaker 1: So on July fifth of eighteen forty one, just a
Speaker 1: month after he had his idea, Thomas led a group
Speaker 1: of five hundred members of the Temperance movement on a trip.
Speaker 1: It was a train ride from Leicester to Lufborough to
Speaker 1: attend a meeting and a lecture there, and each attendee
Speaker 1: paid a shilling for the trip that was arranged by Cook.
Speaker 1: And this trip went very, very smoothly, and its success
Speaker 1: led Cook to plan for more. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: five hundred people is a lot of people. That is
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I mentioned at the top of
Speaker 1: the show how I marveled at managing fifty people on
Speaker 1: a trip. Five hundred seems bananas. To bolster the whole enterprise,
Speaker 1: Cook wanted to be in a bigger city to have
Speaker 1: greater access to travel resources. So to that end, he
Speaker 1: and his family moved to Leicester. The Temperance and Baptist
Speaker 1: community there was much larger, and he was also able
Speaker 1: to expand his business with an id using these businesses
Speaker 1: to promote temperance. He started printing temperance literature in his
Speaker 1: own print shop, and he also opened a bookstore to
Speaker 1: sell that literature in He also printed and sold guide
Speaker 1: books and almanacs through this system, and next he opened
Speaker 1: two Temperance hotels. The first in Darby was managed by
Speaker 1: his mother Elizabeth, and his wife Mary Anne managed the second,
Speaker 1: which was in Leicester. Coming up, we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: Thomas t transition from wrangling groups of temperance supporters to
Speaker 1: managing travel as a business, but first we'll pause for
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. Thomas Cook had since that first rail
Speaker 1: trip from Leicester to Lufborough in eighteen forty one, continued
Speaker 1: to arrange trips for temperance supporters to attend meetings and
Speaker 1: share their ideology throughout England. But in eighteen forty five
Speaker 1: he decided to actually make a business out of it,
Speaker 1: running tours for profit. He had a really good network
Speaker 1: of contacts within the railways at this point, and he
Speaker 1: had already made a name for himself as an efficient
Speaker 1: and trustworthy organizer of group excursions, so he was starting
Speaker 1: this enterprise from a very strong position. Cook's first for
Speaker 1: profit itinerary went to Liverpool, with starting points for travelers
Speaker 1: at Leicester, Derby and Nottingham. This included excursions to Canarvan
Speaker 1: and a hike up Mount Snowden. He was conscious of
Speaker 1: the fact that even on his previous temperance oriented trips,
Speaker 1: for a lot of the people traveling it was a
Speaker 1: really new experience, and to that end he produced a
Speaker 1: handbook for the three hundred and fifty people on this
Speaker 1: Liverpool tour, offering them both practical advice and encouragement to
Speaker 1: abstain from drink while enjoying the journey. This handbook was
Speaker 1: the first of many he assembled them for all of
Speaker 1: his tours after this point. First class tickets cost fifteen
Speaker 1: shillings and second class was ten shillings. Travelers could also
Speaker 1: opt into a steamer cruise to North Wales for an
Speaker 1: additional fee. The Liverpool Tour was a far more ambitious
Speaker 1: project than any of Thomas Cook's Temperance trips had been,
Speaker 1: but it went well, so well that Cook started to
Speaker 1: set his sights on expanding to new destinations, and he decided,
Speaker 1: after he had done some of these Liverpool trips that
Speaker 1: the next excursion he wanted to offer would go to Scotland.
Speaker 1: The Scotland Tour was scheduled for the summer of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty six, and it was Thomas Cook's first real flop
Speaker 1: since he started planning group travel. The several hundred people
Speaker 1: who had booked had been told that they would be
Speaker 1: able to disembark from the train they were on when
Speaker 1: it made stops along the way to the coast, and
Speaker 1: there they were going to board a steamer to Scotland,
Speaker 1: but it turned out that train passengers were not allowed
Speaker 1: to get off and on it stops. The train also
Speaker 1: didn't have bathrooms and it didn't offer food service, so
Speaker 1: by the time the group got to the coast they
Speaker 1: were already miserable. The next leg of the trip was
Speaker 1: aboard the steamer our Drassen, which was also a problem.
Speaker 1: Cook had booked more people than there were cabins. There
Speaker 1: appears to have been a miscommunication between him and the steamer,
Speaker 1: so some of the group had to hang out on
Speaker 1: the deck and they got drenched in a storm that
Speaker 1: came along while they made this crossing. But once the
Speaker 1: group arrived in Scotland, they were warmly welcomed with marching
Speaker 1: bands and other fanfare, and from that point it seems
Speaker 1: to have gone okay. Reviews of this tour were unsurprisingly unkind.
Speaker 1: Part of the criticism was Thomas Cook's unrelenting devotion to temperance,
Speaker 1: which he preached to all his tour groups. This summer
Speaker 1: of problems caused a temporary halt to Cook's travel business.
Speaker 1: He was also seeing new competitors emerge in the publishing market,
Speaker 1: some of whom were printing books and pamphlets on Temperance
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, so he had kind of planned on
Speaker 1: this travel thing going well, and it started well and
Speaker 1: then wasn't. And then this other area of the market
Speaker 1: that he had cornered with suddenly having some competitors and
Speaker 1: he just kind of needed to regroup. So he slowly
Speaker 1: rebuilt his business over the next couple of years, and
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty eight he was once again up and
Speaker 1: running with his tours, publishing and his Temperance hotels. For
Speaker 1: the next couple of years. After that, he launched successful
Speaker 1: tours to Scotland and Ireland, and then a new opportunity
Speaker 1: presented itself to Cook in the form of the Great
Speaker 1: Exposition of eighteen fifty one, which has made numerous appearances
Speaker 1: on the podcast over the years. Cook booked travel arrangements
Speaker 1: for more than one hundred and fifty thousand people to
Speaker 1: go to the Great Exposition. To bolster his travel business,
Speaker 1: he also started publishing the periodical slash Travel catalog Cook's
Speaker 1: Exhibition Harold an Excursion Advertiser. This effort to create Exposition
Speaker 1: tours was incidentally made at the urging of previous podcast
Speaker 1: subject and Crystal Palace architect Sir Joseph Paxton, who hoped
Speaker 1: that Cook would make it possible for the workers outside
Speaker 1: of London to see the hall. Paxton remained a supporter
Speaker 1: of Cook's work long after the Exposition, and Cook's Exhibition
Speaker 1: Harold was later published under the name Cook's Excursionist. And
Speaker 1: after the Great Expo, Thomas Cook built his offerings up
Speaker 1: to meet new levels of demand because he had become
Speaker 1: very well known while planning all of those trips, he
Speaker 1: started offering an assortment of trips that travelers could choose
Speaker 1: from throughout England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. These were not,
Speaker 1: we should note, all inclusive tours. Cook's agency booked travel
Speaker 1: and outlined itineraries and provided guide books, but tourists were
Speaker 1: responsible for booking their own lodging and getting their own food.
Speaker 1: His travel business grew, Thomas Cook ceased operation of his
Speaker 1: printing efforts so that he could focus more on tourism.
Speaker 1: He still printed guidebooks, but he wasn't running his own
Speaker 1: print shop. After a decade of growth and expansion within
Speaker 1: his established roots, Cook expanded his offerings to a wider
Speaker 1: range of destinations on the European continent. This was in
Speaker 1: part because his tours in Scotland ran into a problem,
Speaker 1: which is that the rail companies in Scotland stopped offering
Speaker 1: him discounted group rates for the trains and so to
Speaker 1: expand into this new phase of business, Cooked did two things. First,
Speaker 1: he opened another office in London. Similar to the reasons
Speaker 1: that he moved to Leicester. This shift to London offered
Speaker 1: greater resources and more access to a wider clientele. And second,
Speaker 1: he started creating more comprehensive bookings, ones that did include
Speaker 1: lodging and meals as well as railroad travel and channel crossings.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty five, Thomas Cook mounted his first European
Speaker 1: continental tour to coincide with another exposition, this time the
Speaker 1: Exposition on Uniforseel in Paris. This trip hit a lot
Speaker 1: of other spots before landing at the expo, though from England,
Speaker 1: the group traveled to Antwerp, Brussels, Cologne, Heidelberg and Strasbourg
Speaker 1: before finishing in Paris. In addition to booking the trip
Speaker 1: as a comprehensive package, he also offered a currency exchange
Speaker 1: service to his travelers. Yeah at this point he was
Speaker 1: offering literally like full service travel by the fall of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three, Cook had booked traveled to Switzerland for
Speaker 1: an estimated five hundred tourists and to France for about
Speaker 1: two thousand. The rapid growth of his expanded offerings led
Speaker 1: to Cook being nicknamed the Napoleon of excursions, and before
Speaker 1: long a Cook's tour became synonymous with guided tourist experiences.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty five, the business shifted once again, this
Speaker 1: time because Cook's son, John Mason Cook, started working for
Speaker 1: the firm full time. Over the next six years, John
Speaker 1: helped his father expand the company significantly, so that by
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one there were three offices for the firm
Speaker 1: in England, each with full staff. John was made partner
Speaker 1: that year and the firm became Thomas Cook and Son.
Speaker 1: John had been highly instrumental in getting Cook's company into
Speaker 1: booking travel across the Atlantic, and he had streamlined the
Speaker 1: way the business rans make everything more efficient, but even
Speaker 1: so John had been really reluctant to step into the
Speaker 1: role of partner. After the popularity of Thomas Cook and
Speaker 1: Son's offering for travel to France and Switzerland, the firm
Speaker 1: started offering tours to Italy as well. As we mentioned,
Speaker 1: John helped get it across the Atlantic, so a United
Speaker 1: States itinerary was soon made available, and then they offered
Speaker 1: trips to Egypt and Israel. And as Cook's travel agency
Speaker 1: entered the eighteen seventies, he was as always thinking bigger
Speaker 1: in terms of where he could go. The advertisements for
Speaker 1: the company at this point read a Cook's Ticket brings
Speaker 1: the World to you, and Thomas Cook seemed really intent
Speaker 1: on delivering on that promise. It was this attitude that
Speaker 1: led him to offer the first ever Round the World
Speaker 1: tourist itinerary. It was ambitious, but Cook was driven by
Speaker 1: his religious faith just as much as any business ambition.
Speaker 1: He wanted to continue to share his religious views and
Speaker 1: show people the world simultaneously, believing that in doing so
Speaker 1: he would help promote global peace. To that end, he
Speaker 1: traveled along with his clients on the company's first Round
Speaker 1: the World excursion, which ran from eighteen seventy two to
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three. It took two hundred and twenty two days,
Speaker 1: and his being there was possible in part because he
Speaker 1: had John to manage the offices back home. But despite
Speaker 1: trusting John to handle a lot of the business, Thomas
Speaker 1: and his son had problems, and we are going to
Speaker 1: get into that after we take a break and hear
Speaker 1: from one of the sponsors. To keep stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class going. Thomas and John Cook did not
Speaker 1: always agree on how their business should run, even though
Speaker 1: John was made a partner, and this ultimately caused serious
Speaker 1: problems there. I read some historians that suggest said that
Speaker 1: the two of them had such different approaches that they
Speaker 1: would have been terribly complimentary if it weren't for the
Speaker 1: fact that they were continuously butting heads. So while Thomas
Speaker 1: was shepherding that First World Tour, for example, John settled
Speaker 1: the firm's main offices into a new, fancier and more
Speaker 1: expensive location. When Thomas returned, the travel agency started a
Speaker 1: business partnership with an American partner, and that turned disastrous.
Speaker 1: The idea was that combining their efforts with a business
Speaker 1: interest on the other side of the Atlantic was going
Speaker 1: to bolster travel bookings from North America to Europe and
Speaker 1: vice versa, but that did not work out. Over the
Speaker 1: next several years, Thomas and John were increasingly at odds,
Speaker 1: and the US partnership fell apart, which added even more
Speaker 1: strain into the relationship. Even as they successfully moved on
Speaker 1: to new ventures, including offering cruises, they didn't seem to
Speaker 1: celebrate as much as they seemed to argue, and the
Speaker 1: main issue between them was that they just felt completely
Speaker 1: differently as I said, about how their business should run.
Speaker 1: Thomas had always dreamed big and terms of trips, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't especially concerned with turning huge profits as long
Speaker 1: as they were making some profit. He basically seemed to
Speaker 1: just want enough to provide for his family and then
Speaker 1: donate pretty generously to the various charities that he supported. John,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, envisioned much grander things. He really
Speaker 1: believed that they could be much more financially lucrative, and
Speaker 1: he thought that his father's approach to business was too
Speaker 1: soft and inefficient, and that his father was a little
Speaker 1: bit of a billy dreamer. Additionally, John wanted Thomas to
Speaker 1: keep his religious and temperance views out of their tours
Speaker 1: and maintain those interests as personal matters, not business. This
Speaker 1: strife between Thomas and John wasn't exactly new. It had
Speaker 1: basically been there ever since John was young. There was
Speaker 1: a time, as a very young man, just out of school,
Speaker 1: when John had worked in Thomas's print shop and had
Speaker 1: worked on some of the tours, but the two of
Speaker 1: them had butted heads so often that John left to
Speaker 1: work for a railway company. Even when John returned to
Speaker 1: work for his father in eighteen sixty five, it had
Speaker 1: been because he had a wife and a child to support,
Speaker 1: not because the two of them actually wanted to work together.
Speaker 1: Things eventually came to a head in eighteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: and father and son had a massive fight. The end result,
Speaker 1: although we don't have details on how exactly this decision
Speaker 1: was reached, was that Thomas removed himself from the business entirely.
Speaker 1: He moved full time back to Leicester, where he had
Speaker 1: built a large house, and he just let John run
Speaker 1: things as he wished, But their relationship was damaged beyond repair.
Speaker 1: As the firm was transitioning in leadership from father to son,
Speaker 1: John established a new department at the firm, foreign Banking
Speaker 1: and Money Exchange, and then through this division, the company
Speaker 1: started issuing credit notes for travelers, which evolved into travelers checks.
Speaker 1: It was proved to be a very lucrative enterprise that
Speaker 1: makes travelers checks older than I imagined. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: they were first calling them circular checks, and yeah, they
Speaker 1: eventually set this up again. John, I mean was very
Speaker 1: smart about business, and his father was very smart about
Speaker 1: putting together compelling tours. And if they could just have
Speaker 1: lived in harmony, they probably could have done even more
Speaker 1: amazing things than they did. John also started selecting new
Speaker 1: destinations for the firm, including India, New Zealand and Australia.
Speaker 1: The New Zealand and Australian tours made plenty of money,
Speaker 1: India not so much. John also negotiated government contracts for
Speaker 1: Thomas Cook and Son. So when England sent a force
Speaker 1: to relieve Major General Charles George Gordon, who had become
Speaker 1: embroiled in a conflict with the Mahdi of Soudan in
Speaker 1: the city of Khartoum against the government's wishes, that trip
Speaker 1: was managed by Thomas Cook and Son. Incidentally, that relief
Speaker 1: effort arrived too late, Gordon's stronghold had fallen and he
Speaker 1: had already been killed. That is a whole other potential
Speaker 1: podcast episode. Under John Mason Cook, the firm also transported
Speaker 1: Indian Royalty to London to celebrate the Queen's to Jubileese
Speaker 1: and what seemed to initially like a move his father
Speaker 1: would have made. John also assisted in the transport of
Speaker 1: Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. Eventually, though, even though this was
Speaker 1: part of a mission initialized by the British Government's India Office,
Speaker 1: Cook's faars were too high that deal ended. Thomas and
Speaker 1: his wife Marianne lived in his retirement, during which he
Speaker 1: was getting a pension from his son, with their daughter Annie,
Speaker 1: who had never married, and two years after they moved
Speaker 1: into the house that was called Thorncroft. That was that
Speaker 1: large house that Thomas had built in Leicester. There was
Speaker 1: a tragic loss when Annie died in her bathtub. The
Speaker 1: gas fumes from a new heater were determined to have
Speaker 1: been the cause, and Thomas's wife Marianne died four years
Speaker 1: later in eighteen eighty four. Thomas Cook continued his life
Speaker 1: quietly outside of the company. He continued to travel and
Speaker 1: to work with the church and in the Temperance movement.
Speaker 1: He did eventually lose his sight. In eighteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: Thomas Cook and sons celebrated the company's silver jubilee. Thomas
Speaker 1: did not attend, although it is unknown whether that was
Speaker 1: his choice, perhaps because his health was not great or
Speaker 1: because his son did not want him there. The firm
Speaker 1: celebrated their immense success without their founder. At that point,
Speaker 1: the company had eighty four offices and more than twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred employees, and the next in line to run
Speaker 1: things were John's three sons. Although John continued to head
Speaker 1: things up for a while, and he even expanded the
Speaker 1: company once again to include a fleet of steamers that
Speaker 1: offered Nile River cruises. John did make a move that
Speaker 1: seemed a little bit more like something his father would
Speaker 1: have done when he paid for a hospital to be
Speaker 1: built in Egypt. The year after the company's celebration, Thomas died.
Speaker 1: That was on July eighteenth, eighteen ninety two. He had
Speaker 1: had a stroke. He was buried in Leicester on July
Speaker 1: twenty second. As obituary in The Times referred to him
Speaker 1: and John as the Julius and Augustus Caesar of travel.
Speaker 1: Thomas's will was at odds with his existing worth. At
Speaker 1: the time of his death, his estate was worth roughly
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred pounds, but the amount that he bequeathed
Speaker 1: in his will was four two hundred twenty five pounds,
Speaker 1: which has left some history. Ourian's puzzling over what exactly
Speaker 1: happened to the great fortune that he had made. And
Speaker 1: while he was very generous throughout his life, believing that
Speaker 1: it was his duty as a religious man to help
Speaker 1: others in need. For example, he had arranged everything from
Speaker 1: soup kitchens to the building of cottages for the poor
Speaker 1: over the years, there is still a lot of puzzling
Speaker 1: over how exactly he ended up with so little. John
Speaker 1: didn't even break stride in terms of business. After his
Speaker 1: father died. He had become very much a social climber,
Speaker 1: and whenever any royalty books travel with the firm, he
Speaker 1: personally escorted them during their journey. When the first modern
Speaker 1: Olympic Games took place in Athens in eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: John made sure that the Cook firm was their travel partner.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety eight, while escorting Kaiservillehelm the Second on
Speaker 1: a trip to the Holy Land, John Cook became ill,
Speaker 1: most likely with dysentery, and though John returned home, he
Speaker 1: continued to be unwell for several months leading up to
Speaker 1: his death on March sixth, eighteen ninety nine. John's son's Frank,
Speaker 1: Earnest and Burt took over the travel agency in its
Speaker 1: many offices, and the company continued to flourish. They kept
Speaker 1: printing The Excursionist, although the name was changed to Traveler's Gazette,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen nineteen they became the first UK travel
Speaker 1: agent to offer air bookings. Thomas Cook's grandsons sold the
Speaker 1: business in nineteen twenty eight to a Belgian firm for
Speaker 1: three point five million pounds, and the firm that Cook
Speaker 1: started still exists under the name Thomas Cook, although in
Speaker 1: recent times it has had some struggles. In May of
Speaker 1: this year, which is twenty nineteen, the Guardian reported that
Speaker 1: the company lost one point five billion euros due to
Speaker 1: Brexit uncertainty. People were canceling trips because they didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going to happen next. And then a few
Speaker 1: weeks later reports hitting the news that Fossen International, that's
Speaker 1: the Chinese conglomerate that owns Club Med was interested in
Speaker 1: purchasing the company, and the company was talking with them still.
Speaker 1: A June eighteenth article in Travel Weekly announced plans for
Speaker 1: the Thomas Cook Company to open two new hotels in Egypt,
Speaker 1: and the day before we recorded this, but a little
Speaker 1: while before you will hear it, they announced their move
Speaker 1: of their digital marketing office to Manchester from London, and
Speaker 1: new efforts to market their airline division. So regardless of
Speaker 1: what happens next to the company that bears his name,
Speaker 1: it was really Thomas Cook that set the stage for
Speaker 1: the industry of tourism as we know it today. Whenever
Speaker 1: he selected a destination as an offering, it became a
Speaker 1: standard vacation spot for his clients. And this way he
Speaker 1: planted the seeds of this industry which now drives the
Speaker 1: economies of many countries and many individual places within countries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really fascinating to think about. Like he would basically say,
Speaker 1: like I think we should start going to Switzerland, and
Speaker 1: people would start going to Switzerland, and then towns that
Speaker 1: he went to in Switzerland would be like, we have
Speaker 1: a booming tourist economy, we should court tourism, and like
Speaker 1: that cycle would happen over and over and over and
Speaker 1: in many ways, he really ended up kind of shifting
Speaker 1: the way that various areas managed their economics because that, again,
Speaker 1: tourism is a big business. Thanks so much for joining
Speaker 1: us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us
Speaker 1: a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot
Speaker 1: com and you can subscribe to the show on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.