by J D Bennett
November 2008 saw the 200th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Cook. His long association with Leicester began in July 1841 when he arranged for a party of local temperance supporters to travel by train to a rally at Loughborough, and was resumed in the autumn of that year when he moved to the city, living first in King Street, then at two different addresses in Granby Street.
For the rest of that decade and into the early 1850s he continued with his business as a printer, bookseller and stationer, but from 1845 onwards began organising commercial excursions, to Liverpool and the North Wales coast, Scotland, and local venues such as Belvoir Castle, Ashby-de-la-Zouch and Chatsworth.
His success in transporting many thousands of people from the Midlands and North of England to London for the Great Exhibition of 1851, by Midland Railway, no doubt helped him decide to give up his printing business and become a full-time 'excursionist' in 1854. As he had a family to support it was a bold move, but it worked. Continental trips began in 1855 with a visit to Paris, including Belgium and Germany en route, and other European destinations followed.
Cook had had a presence in London since 1862 when he organised accommodation for visitors to the International Exhibition in South Kensington. His British Museum Boarding House, opposite that famous institution, had a discreet office at the rear, but in 1865 a full-time office was opened in Fleet Street, managed by his son, John Mason Cook, who had joined the firm the previous year. Large new, purpose-built offices were opened in Ludgate Circus in 1873.
By then the firm, now called Thomas Cook & Son, already had its own newspaper, 'Cook's Excursionist', and was also starting to publish railway and steamship timetables and guidebooks. Its programmewas no longer limited to Europe, but included the United States and Canada, Egypt and Palestine, and in 1872 offered its first world tour, lasting an amazing 222 days, which Cook himself conducted. In 1879 John Mason Cook took over the running of the firm and his father retired to the house on London Road in Leicester which he had recently had built.
The last years of Thomas Cook's life were marred by the tragic death of his daughter, Annie Elizabeth Cook, who was overcome by fumes from a faulty gas water-heater and drowned in her bath in 1880; by the loss of his wife, Marianne Cook, in 1884; and by his own failing health and eyesight. When the firm celebrated its jubilee with a banquet at a London hotel in 1891, Cook himself was not well enough to attend; he died in July of the following year at the age of 83.
The Baptist chapel in Archdeacon Lane where Thomas Cook and his family worshiped, the Cook Memorial Hall opposite built in memory of his daughter, and the Temperance Hall which he built in Granby Street have all gone, but you can still see evidence of his presence in Leicester:
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The former Cook offices in Gallowtree Gate, by Goddard, Paget & Goddard, 1894, built by his son, with four terracotta panels showing the firm's history from 1841 to 1891.
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The upper facade of his Commercial & Family Temperance Hotel in Granby Street, the future of which is apparently in doubt. It was designed by the same architect as the adjacent Temperance Hall, James Medland of Gloucester, and opened in 1853.
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The Cook statue at the corner of London Road and Station Street by James Butler, unveiled in 1994. The two stone gateposts at the end of Station Street are all that remain of the Midland Counties Railway Station from which his 1841 excursion departed.
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Thomcroft, the house which Cook had built for his retirement, at 244 London Road, now the headquarters of the Leicestershire branch of the British Red Cross Society; there is a blue plaque on the facade.
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The grave of Thomas Cook, his wife and daughter in Welford Road Cemetery and that of John Mason Cook and his wife.
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A series of oval plaques on buildings in Leicester recording Cook's connection with them.
(From Community History Newsletter 63 (Winter 2008-2009), published by Leicester City Council's Community History Team: www.leicester.gov.uk/libraries)
