THOMAS COOK, Travel Pioneer, 1808-1892
The Blue Plaque is located at the site of his home, 'Thorncroft', 244 London Road.
Thomas Cook, born at Melbourne, Derbyshire, suffered much hardship during his early life. His father died when he was 5, and at the age of 10 he worked as an under-gardener for a penny a day. He was later employed as a wood-turner at Market Harborough, and by a printer at Loughborough, before starting his own printing business in King Street, Leicester, producing temperance literature.
His career as a travel pioneer began in 1841, when he hired a train to take a party from Leicester to a temperance rally in Loughborough. The success of this first trip led him to establish his travel business, and in 1851 he transported thousands of visitors to the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace.
The Paris Exhibition of 1855 drew Thomas Cook abroad for the first time, and within a year or two he was arranging holidays all over the continent. Cook joined the Prince of Wales at the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and took parties to Syria and the Holy Land. By the 1880s, his firm had obtained a monopoly of Nile passenger traffic and had set up their own fleet of steamers.
Thomas Cook died in 1892 and is buried in Welford Road Cemetery, Leicester. After Cook's death, the business was continued by his son John Mason Cook.
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