He has been called the father of modern tourism and was responsible for opening up the world to people who had never previously had the opportunity to travel.
In this episode, we take a look at the life of Thomas Cook, the alcohol-hating travel pioneer.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a man called Thomas Cook.
[00:00:27] Now, the name Thomas Cook might ring a bell, it might sound familiar to you. Perhaps you’ve seen Thomas Cook aeroplanes, cruises, or perhaps you’ve even been on a Thomas Cook holiday.
[00:00:40] But we are going to be talking about the man behind this travel company, a man who, by many people’s standards, invented modern tourism.
[00:00:50] It’s a fascinating story about a man with a mission, the industrial revolution, and the opening up of the UK, Europe, and the wider world to an entirely new generation of tourists.
[00:01:04] We’ve got a lot to get through, so let’s get right into it.
[00:01:09] If you had heard of Thomas Cook, I wonder what thought first sprung to mind.
[00:01:15] Perhaps it’s seeing signs for Thomas Cook in airports.
[00:01:18] If you live in a place where there are lots of tourists, like the south coast of Spain, for example, perhaps it’s seeing Thomas Cook buses, or seeing huge groups of British tourists who have spent too much time in the sun and drunk too many beers.
[00:01:35] The name Thomas Cook is now synonymous with package holidays, where you can buy a flight, a hotel, and often all the food and alcoholic drinks you can stomach, all for one fixed, low price.
[00:01:50] And on the subject of alcohol, as you may know, British holidaymakers have somewhat of a bad reputation for drinking a lot.
[00:01:59] Indeed, Thomas Cook had to issue a warning in 2022 to British holidaymakers to Spain that their supposed “unlimited drinks” were in fact going to be limited to six per day.
[00:02:13] Now, you might think that six alcoholic drinks a day sounds like a serious amount, and nobody should ever reach that number, but let me tell you that this was enough of a surprise to British holidaymakers that it made headline news.
[00:02:30] And on the subject of surprises, let me tell you that Thomas Cook the man, the original founder of the company, would be turning in his grave, he would be very upset, if he found out that his name was being used to advertise and promote drinking alcohol.
[00:02:49] Why?
[00:02:50] Well, because his eponymous, company, Thomas Cook, was founded as a way to encourage people to stop drinking.
[00:02:59] He was a man on a mission, and that mission was simple: stop people getting drunk.
[00:03:07] To understand why this was, to understand why this mission led him to founding this company, we must do three things: first, we must spend some time reflecting on what life was like in 19th century Britain for working people, then briefly talk about the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution, and then look at Thomas Cook the man.
[00:03:32] So, what was life like in 19th century Britain?
[00:03:36] Well, for the vast majority of the population, it was pretty grim, it wasn't much fun.
[00:03:42] There had been a mass migration of people from the countryside to the industrial cities, where people lived together in cramped housing, working 12 hour days and with one day off a week if they were lucky.
[00:03:56] There simply wasn’t much free time, and the free time there was was typically spent drinking alcohol.
[00:04:03] Work in the factories from dawn until dusk, Monday to Saturday, then go to the pub on a Saturday night to blow your wages, to spend your money on beer and whisky.
[00:04:15] This was how most people working in mid-19th century Britain lived their lives.
[00:04:21] Now, if you’re thinking, “don’t people in Britain still do this?”, sure, you'd be partly right, but it was so much more widespread during the Victorian Era than it is today.
[00:04:33] Drunkenness was a huge issue, and with it violence, which was often directed at poor men’s wives as they returned home after a heavy night of drinking.
[00:04:45] So, that’s our first factor, a working population with little to no “free time”, and one that used alcohol as its primary method of relaxation and leisure.
[00:04:58] Secondly, we must talk about the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution.
[00:05:04] And the most important factor here was the invention of the steam train and the railways.
[00:05:11] The world’s first railway dates back to 1825, when a man called George Stephenson connected two towns in the northeast of England by railway.
[00:05:23] Within 25 years, there was 10,000 kilometres of railway throughout the country, and most major towns were connected. Importantly, it was cheap, it was relatively affordable.
[00:05:37] Why was this important?
[00:05:39] Well, it meant that, for the first time in history, it was comparatively easy, affordable and fast to travel from one place to another, and travel, after all, is what tourism is all about.
[00:05:54] And this brings us to the man we’re talking about today, Thomas Cook.
[00:05:59] He was born in 1808 in Melbourne.
[00:06:03] No, not Melbourne, Australia; Melbourne, Derbyshire, a market town in the middle of England.
[00:06:10] He grew up towards the end of the Industrial Revolution, and as a consequence he saw its effect on the people around him.
[00:06:20] And what did he see?
[00:06:22] Well, what we talked about a few minutes ago. Men and women working long hours in dangerous and unfulfilling work, and using alcohol as a way of escape.
[00:06:34] Cook left school aged only ten years old, and he immediately got his first job, working as a gardener for a penny a day, before becoming an apprentice woodworker, someone who made wooden furniture.
[00:06:48] His upbringing was a highly religious one; his parents were both devout Baptists, and Cook would follow in their footsteps. He was a preacher in his teenage years, and at the age of twenty he became a full-on missionary, distributing information about the Baptist church and trying to convert people.
[00:07:12] A couple of years later, in 1830, at the age of 22, he discovered the Temperance movement, which was a social movement that campaigned against alcohol and drunkenness.
[00:07:24] He became an advocate of this movement, preaching to anyone who would listen about the dangers of alcohol.
[00:07:32] But clearly, there was a limited impact any one man could have.
[00:07:37] He might persuade a few people to stop drinking, doing the Lord’s work as he believed it was, but this was a problem that affected the entire country.
[00:07:48] So, what could be done about it?
[00:07:51] Well, Thomas Cook had an idea.
[00:07:55] It all started in 1841, when he needed to go to a meeting of Temperance campaigners twenty five kilometres away.
[00:08:04] His plan was to walk there, but he had an idea, and I’m quoting directly:
[00:08:11] “A thought flashed through my brain – what a glorious thing it would be if the newly developed powers of railways and locomotion could be made subservient to the promotion of temperance”
[00:08:25] Or to translate this into plain English, what if we could use trains to encourage people to stop drinking alcohol?
[00:08:33] And so his first trip, or tour, was taking a group of 500 Temperance campaigners on a short railway journey. Easy enough, you might think.
[00:08:46] But Cook sensed the potential.
[00:08:49] It was all well and good taking people to and from Temperance movements, but what if he could provide an alternative to drinking?
[00:08:59] What if he could give working people a way to experience something new, another leisure activity, and most importantly, one that didn’t require alcohol?
[00:09:12] It took several years, and he first focussed his efforts on transporting groups of people to and from Temperance movements across the north of England.
[00:09:22] But clearly, the seed was planted, he had the idea of how to turn this into something bigger.
[00:09:31] He got to work, and by 1845 he had arranged his first package tour, taking a group of 350 people on a railway tour to Scotland.
[00:09:44] Now, this might sound like nothing particularly special to you or me, but at the time it really was revolutionary.
[00:09:54] Tourism as we know it now simply didn’t exist.
[00:09:59] Sure, this wasn’t the first time in history that people travelled to experience something new.
[00:10:05] Even going back to the ancient Egyptians there are records of pharaohs going to visit the pyramids or other famous sites. The Greeks went to consult the Oracle or watch sporting events, and even moving into the 17th century in Britain there was this idea of The Grand Tour, which you can hear about in episode number 176 by the way.
[00:10:28] And, of course, the history of people travelling for religious reasons, for pilgrimage, is as old as time.
[00:10:37] But these types of trips would take a long time, because you’d have to go by carriage, boat, horse, or even by foot, and in the case of the non-religious trips, they were restricted to the wealthiest in society, people who could afford to simply not work for months or years at a time and to take these vastly expensive trips. Cook’s genius, or at least invention, was to open up the ability of experiencing a new place to an entirely new section of society: everyone else.
[00:11:16] Initially, the trips were within the UK, with his most popular route being the tours north, to Scotland.
[00:11:24] Again, to reiterate, although now you can get from Manchester to Glasgow on a train in just over three hours, before Thomas Cook's first excursions, this simply wasn’t something that people did, nor something they had any reason to do.
[00:11:41] As a result, the arrival of Thomas Cook’s groups was quite the spectacle.
[00:11:48] When the trains first arrived in Glasgow station guns were fired, a band was waiting to play a celebratory song, and speeches of praise were read out.
[00:12:00] It really was quite something.
[00:12:03] Thomas Cook was doing exactly as he had hoped - he was providing an alcohol-free leisure alternative, he was giving people the chance to see the world, or at least “the country”, without beer goggles, without a drop of alcohol.
[00:12:20] And his work was not going unnoticed.
[00:12:25] He was asked to help transport workers from the north of England south, to London, for the 1851 Great Exhibition, which you can also learn about in episode number 59 by the way.
[00:12:37] He accepted, he did it, and it’s believed that he successfully transported 150,000 people.
[00:12:45] No mean feat, especially as nobody had ever done anything like this before.
[00:12:52] Up until then, he had only arranged domestic travel, trips within Britain.
[00:12:58] There was the rest of the world to see, but one step at a time.
[00:13:03] In the summer of 1855 he opened his first European route, the so-called “grand circular”, where people would visit Brussels, Cologne, the Rhine, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Strasbourg and Paris, where travellers would go to the 1855 Paris Great Exhibition, before returning to Britain.
[00:13:24] Again, you can do this all on your own relatively easy now, but imagine 170 years ago?
[00:13:32] Not only do you have greater language barriers, but how do you manage the different currencies, where to stay, where to eat, and so on?
[00:13:42] In fact, Cook had initially planned to simply sell the travel ticket, but he had so many people asking him to organise all of the accommodation and food that he agreed, providing everything for five pounds, today’s equivalent of around €500. This was, perhaps, the first “all inclusive package holiday”.
[00:14:08] Actually delivering this was complicated, because he had to arrange deals with hotels, and restaurants, manage different currencies and so on.
[00:14:17] It was very tricky, but he managed it thanks to two innovations.
[00:14:23] Firstly, something called the hotel coupon, which travellers could use to pay for food and rooms at various partner hotels.
[00:14:31] And then a few years later something called the circular note, which was a piece of paper that travellers could exchange for local currency. A bit like a traveller’s cheque.
[00:14:43] By now, Thomas Cook was the biggest tour operator not just in Britain or Europe, but the world. I mean, there wasn’t much competition, but this was a man who pioneered the entire concept of mass tourism.
[00:15:00] And after his European success, the next target was indeed, the world.
[00:15:07] In 1865 it was America, in 1869 he sold a package tour up the River Nile, and in 1873 he completed his own world tour, a 222-day mammoth trip going west from London to the United States, across North America, across the Pacific to Japan, then working his way through China, India, up through the Suez Canal and back to London.
[00:15:37] And soon enough this was a tour he also offered to his customers, costing 200 guineas, which is today’s equivalent of around €20,000.
[00:15:49] Sure, not affordable to all, but a remarkable achievement that this was even something that he was able to offer.
[00:15:58] By this time, however, he was growing old, and the day-to-day running of the business was managed by his son, John Cook.
[00:16:07] He died in 1892 at the ripe old age of 83, which was pretty good going as British life expectancy at the time was a measly 47 years.
[00:16:19] And in terms of the legacy he left, well clearly there is the company named after him, which has gone through various booms and busts, and is now only a travel agency, after going bankrupt in 2019.
[00:16:34] But what he really left behind is something more than the Thomas Cook name.
[00:16:40] It’s the invention of mass tourism, it’s the idea that there is value in visiting new places, having new experiences, and seeing something new.
[00:16:51] Sure, seeing new places didn’t start with Thomas Cook, and the tourism industry would have certainly boomed without Thomas Cook.
[00:17:00] And his motivations for getting started might not have been anything to do with tourism; they might have been religious, in a bid to rid the country of the scourge of alcohol abuse, and as anyone who has been on a Thomas Cook holiday will know, Thomas Cook package holidays are certainly not alcohol free.
[00:17:20] So he might have failed if judged by his own “Temperance” standards.
[00:17:26] But in terms of increasing the accessibility of tourism, his achievements were seismic; he opened people’s eyes to the wonder of tourism, and crucially, made it available and accessible to people who had never had the opportunity to experience it before.
[00:17:45] So next time you go on holiday, perhaps you’ll spare a thought for this pioneer, the man who can quite rightly be called The Father of Modern Tourism.
[00:17:59] OK then, that is it for today's episode this brief look into the life and times of Thomas Cook and The Birth of Modern Tourism.
[00:18:08] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:18:12] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:16] Did you know about Thomas Cook before?
[00:18:19] If you’re from a part of the world with lots of British tourists, what are your first thoughts when you hear the name “Thomas Cook”? I imagine they weren’t “promoter of an alcohol-free lifestyle”.
[00:18:31] And what do you think about modern mass tourism?
[00:18:34] What do you think Thomas Cook would say if he could see the impact of the tourism industry today?
[00:18:41] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:18:44] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:18:53] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:18:58] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a man called Thomas Cook.
[00:00:27] Now, the name Thomas Cook might ring a bell, it might sound familiar to you. Perhaps you’ve seen Thomas Cook aeroplanes, cruises, or perhaps you’ve even been on a Thomas Cook holiday.
[00:00:40] But we are going to be talking about the man behind this travel company, a man who, by many people’s standards, invented modern tourism.
[00:00:50] It’s a fascinating story about a man with a mission, the industrial revolution, and the opening up of the UK, Europe, and the wider world to an entirely new generation of tourists.
[00:01:04] We’ve got a lot to get through, so let’s get right into it.
[00:01:09] If you had heard of Thomas Cook, I wonder what thought first sprung to mind.
[00:01:15] Perhaps it’s seeing signs for Thomas Cook in airports.
[00:01:18] If you live in a place where there are lots of tourists, like the south coast of Spain, for example, perhaps it’s seeing Thomas Cook buses, or seeing huge groups of British tourists who have spent too much time in the sun and drunk too many beers.
[00:01:35] The name Thomas Cook is now synonymous with package holidays, where you can buy a flight, a hotel, and often all the food and alcoholic drinks you can stomach, all for one fixed, low price.
[00:01:50] And on the subject of alcohol, as you may know, British holidaymakers have somewhat of a bad reputation for drinking a lot.
[00:01:59] Indeed, Thomas Cook had to issue a warning in 2022 to British holidaymakers to Spain that their supposed “unlimited drinks” were in fact going to be limited to six per day.
[00:02:13] Now, you might think that six alcoholic drinks a day sounds like a serious amount, and nobody should ever reach that number, but let me tell you that this was enough of a surprise to British holidaymakers that it made headline news.
[00:02:30] And on the subject of surprises, let me tell you that Thomas Cook the man, the original founder of the company, would be turning in his grave, he would be very upset, if he found out that his name was being used to advertise and promote drinking alcohol.
[00:02:49] Why?
[00:02:50] Well, because his eponymous, company, Thomas Cook, was founded as a way to encourage people to stop drinking.
[00:02:59] He was a man on a mission, and that mission was simple: stop people getting drunk.
[00:03:07] To understand why this was, to understand why this mission led him to founding this company, we must do three things: first, we must spend some time reflecting on what life was like in 19th century Britain for working people, then briefly talk about the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution, and then look at Thomas Cook the man.
[00:03:32] So, what was life like in 19th century Britain?
[00:03:36] Well, for the vast majority of the population, it was pretty grim, it wasn't much fun.
[00:03:42] There had been a mass migration of people from the countryside to the industrial cities, where people lived together in cramped housing, working 12 hour days and with one day off a week if they were lucky.
[00:03:56] There simply wasn’t much free time, and the free time there was was typically spent drinking alcohol.
[00:04:03] Work in the factories from dawn until dusk, Monday to Saturday, then go to the pub on a Saturday night to blow your wages, to spend your money on beer and whisky.
[00:04:15] This was how most people working in mid-19th century Britain lived their lives.
[00:04:21] Now, if you’re thinking, “don’t people in Britain still do this?”, sure, you'd be partly right, but it was so much more widespread during the Victorian Era than it is today.
[00:04:33] Drunkenness was a huge issue, and with it violence, which was often directed at poor men’s wives as they returned home after a heavy night of drinking.
[00:04:45] So, that’s our first factor, a working population with little to no “free time”, and one that used alcohol as its primary method of relaxation and leisure.
[00:04:58] Secondly, we must talk about the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution.
[00:05:04] And the most important factor here was the invention of the steam train and the railways.
[00:05:11] The world’s first railway dates back to 1825, when a man called George Stephenson connected two towns in the northeast of England by railway.
[00:05:23] Within 25 years, there was 10,000 kilometres of railway throughout the country, and most major towns were connected. Importantly, it was cheap, it was relatively affordable.
[00:05:37] Why was this important?
[00:05:39] Well, it meant that, for the first time in history, it was comparatively easy, affordable and fast to travel from one place to another, and travel, after all, is what tourism is all about.
[00:05:54] And this brings us to the man we’re talking about today, Thomas Cook.
[00:05:59] He was born in 1808 in Melbourne.
[00:06:03] No, not Melbourne, Australia; Melbourne, Derbyshire, a market town in the middle of England.
[00:06:10] He grew up towards the end of the Industrial Revolution, and as a consequence he saw its effect on the people around him.
[00:06:20] And what did he see?
[00:06:22] Well, what we talked about a few minutes ago. Men and women working long hours in dangerous and unfulfilling work, and using alcohol as a way of escape.
[00:06:34] Cook left school aged only ten years old, and he immediately got his first job, working as a gardener for a penny a day, before becoming an apprentice woodworker, someone who made wooden furniture.
[00:06:48] His upbringing was a highly religious one; his parents were both devout Baptists, and Cook would follow in their footsteps. He was a preacher in his teenage years, and at the age of twenty he became a full-on missionary, distributing information about the Baptist church and trying to convert people.
[00:07:12] A couple of years later, in 1830, at the age of 22, he discovered the Temperance movement, which was a social movement that campaigned against alcohol and drunkenness.
[00:07:24] He became an advocate of this movement, preaching to anyone who would listen about the dangers of alcohol.
[00:07:32] But clearly, there was a limited impact any one man could have.
[00:07:37] He might persuade a few people to stop drinking, doing the Lord’s work as he believed it was, but this was a problem that affected the entire country.
[00:07:48] So, what could be done about it?
[00:07:51] Well, Thomas Cook had an idea.
[00:07:55] It all started in 1841, when he needed to go to a meeting of Temperance campaigners twenty five kilometres away.
[00:08:04] His plan was to walk there, but he had an idea, and I’m quoting directly:
[00:08:11] “A thought flashed through my brain – what a glorious thing it would be if the newly developed powers of railways and locomotion could be made subservient to the promotion of temperance”
[00:08:25] Or to translate this into plain English, what if we could use trains to encourage people to stop drinking alcohol?
[00:08:33] And so his first trip, or tour, was taking a group of 500 Temperance campaigners on a short railway journey. Easy enough, you might think.
[00:08:46] But Cook sensed the potential.
[00:08:49] It was all well and good taking people to and from Temperance movements, but what if he could provide an alternative to drinking?
[00:08:59] What if he could give working people a way to experience something new, another leisure activity, and most importantly, one that didn’t require alcohol?
[00:09:12] It took several years, and he first focussed his efforts on transporting groups of people to and from Temperance movements across the north of England.
[00:09:22] But clearly, the seed was planted, he had the idea of how to turn this into something bigger.
[00:09:31] He got to work, and by 1845 he had arranged his first package tour, taking a group of 350 people on a railway tour to Scotland.
[00:09:44] Now, this might sound like nothing particularly special to you or me, but at the time it really was revolutionary.
[00:09:54] Tourism as we know it now simply didn’t exist.
[00:09:59] Sure, this wasn’t the first time in history that people travelled to experience something new.
[00:10:05] Even going back to the ancient Egyptians there are records of pharaohs going to visit the pyramids or other famous sites. The Greeks went to consult the Oracle or watch sporting events, and even moving into the 17th century in Britain there was this idea of The Grand Tour, which you can hear about in episode number 176 by the way.
[00:10:28] And, of course, the history of people travelling for religious reasons, for pilgrimage, is as old as time.
[00:10:37] But these types of trips would take a long time, because you’d have to go by carriage, boat, horse, or even by foot, and in the case of the non-religious trips, they were restricted to the wealthiest in society, people who could afford to simply not work for months or years at a time and to take these vastly expensive trips. Cook’s genius, or at least invention, was to open up the ability of experiencing a new place to an entirely new section of society: everyone else.
[00:11:16] Initially, the trips were within the UK, with his most popular route being the tours north, to Scotland.
[00:11:24] Again, to reiterate, although now you can get from Manchester to Glasgow on a train in just over three hours, before Thomas Cook's first excursions, this simply wasn’t something that people did, nor something they had any reason to do.
[00:11:41] As a result, the arrival of Thomas Cook’s groups was quite the spectacle.
[00:11:48] When the trains first arrived in Glasgow station guns were fired, a band was waiting to play a celebratory song, and speeches of praise were read out.
[00:12:00] It really was quite something.
[00:12:03] Thomas Cook was doing exactly as he had hoped - he was providing an alcohol-free leisure alternative, he was giving people the chance to see the world, or at least “the country”, without beer goggles, without a drop of alcohol.
[00:12:20] And his work was not going unnoticed.
[00:12:25] He was asked to help transport workers from the north of England south, to London, for the 1851 Great Exhibition, which you can also learn about in episode number 59 by the way.
[00:12:37] He accepted, he did it, and it’s believed that he successfully transported 150,000 people.
[00:12:45] No mean feat, especially as nobody had ever done anything like this before.
[00:12:52] Up until then, he had only arranged domestic travel, trips within Britain.
[00:12:58] There was the rest of the world to see, but one step at a time.
[00:13:03] In the summer of 1855 he opened his first European route, the so-called “grand circular”, where people would visit Brussels, Cologne, the Rhine, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Strasbourg and Paris, where travellers would go to the 1855 Paris Great Exhibition, before returning to Britain.
[00:13:24] Again, you can do this all on your own relatively easy now, but imagine 170 years ago?
[00:13:32] Not only do you have greater language barriers, but how do you manage the different currencies, where to stay, where to eat, and so on?
[00:13:42] In fact, Cook had initially planned to simply sell the travel ticket, but he had so many people asking him to organise all of the accommodation and food that he agreed, providing everything for five pounds, today’s equivalent of around €500. This was, perhaps, the first “all inclusive package holiday”.
[00:14:08] Actually delivering this was complicated, because he had to arrange deals with hotels, and restaurants, manage different currencies and so on.
[00:14:17] It was very tricky, but he managed it thanks to two innovations.
[00:14:23] Firstly, something called the hotel coupon, which travellers could use to pay for food and rooms at various partner hotels.
[00:14:31] And then a few years later something called the circular note, which was a piece of paper that travellers could exchange for local currency. A bit like a traveller’s cheque.
[00:14:43] By now, Thomas Cook was the biggest tour operator not just in Britain or Europe, but the world. I mean, there wasn’t much competition, but this was a man who pioneered the entire concept of mass tourism.
[00:15:00] And after his European success, the next target was indeed, the world.
[00:15:07] In 1865 it was America, in 1869 he sold a package tour up the River Nile, and in 1873 he completed his own world tour, a 222-day mammoth trip going west from London to the United States, across North America, across the Pacific to Japan, then working his way through China, India, up through the Suez Canal and back to London.
[00:15:37] And soon enough this was a tour he also offered to his customers, costing 200 guineas, which is today’s equivalent of around €20,000.
[00:15:49] Sure, not affordable to all, but a remarkable achievement that this was even something that he was able to offer.
[00:15:58] By this time, however, he was growing old, and the day-to-day running of the business was managed by his son, John Cook.
[00:16:07] He died in 1892 at the ripe old age of 83, which was pretty good going as British life expectancy at the time was a measly 47 years.
[00:16:19] And in terms of the legacy he left, well clearly there is the company named after him, which has gone through various booms and busts, and is now only a travel agency, after going bankrupt in 2019.
[00:16:34] But what he really left behind is something more than the Thomas Cook name.
[00:16:40] It’s the invention of mass tourism, it’s the idea that there is value in visiting new places, having new experiences, and seeing something new.
[00:16:51] Sure, seeing new places didn’t start with Thomas Cook, and the tourism industry would have certainly boomed without Thomas Cook.
[00:17:00] And his motivations for getting started might not have been anything to do with tourism; they might have been religious, in a bid to rid the country of the scourge of alcohol abuse, and as anyone who has been on a Thomas Cook holiday will know, Thomas Cook package holidays are certainly not alcohol free.
[00:17:20] So he might have failed if judged by his own “Temperance” standards.
[00:17:26] But in terms of increasing the accessibility of tourism, his achievements were seismic; he opened people’s eyes to the wonder of tourism, and crucially, made it available and accessible to people who had never had the opportunity to experience it before.
[00:17:45] So next time you go on holiday, perhaps you’ll spare a thought for this pioneer, the man who can quite rightly be called The Father of Modern Tourism.
[00:17:59] OK then, that is it for today's episode this brief look into the life and times of Thomas Cook and The Birth of Modern Tourism.
[00:18:08] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:18:12] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:16] Did you know about Thomas Cook before?
[00:18:19] If you’re from a part of the world with lots of British tourists, what are your first thoughts when you hear the name “Thomas Cook”? I imagine they weren’t “promoter of an alcohol-free lifestyle”.
[00:18:31] And what do you think about modern mass tourism?
[00:18:34] What do you think Thomas Cook would say if he could see the impact of the tourism industry today?
[00:18:41] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:18:44] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:18:53] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:18:58] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a man called Thomas Cook.
[00:00:27] Now, the name Thomas Cook might ring a bell, it might sound familiar to you. Perhaps you’ve seen Thomas Cook aeroplanes, cruises, or perhaps you’ve even been on a Thomas Cook holiday.
[00:00:40] But we are going to be talking about the man behind this travel company, a man who, by many people’s standards, invented modern tourism.
[00:00:50] It’s a fascinating story about a man with a mission, the industrial revolution, and the opening up of the UK, Europe, and the wider world to an entirely new generation of tourists.
[00:01:04] We’ve got a lot to get through, so let’s get right into it.
[00:01:09] If you had heard of Thomas Cook, I wonder what thought first sprung to mind.
[00:01:15] Perhaps it’s seeing signs for Thomas Cook in airports.
[00:01:18] If you live in a place where there are lots of tourists, like the south coast of Spain, for example, perhaps it’s seeing Thomas Cook buses, or seeing huge groups of British tourists who have spent too much time in the sun and drunk too many beers.
[00:01:35] The name Thomas Cook is now synonymous with package holidays, where you can buy a flight, a hotel, and often all the food and alcoholic drinks you can stomach, all for one fixed, low price.
[00:01:50] And on the subject of alcohol, as you may know, British holidaymakers have somewhat of a bad reputation for drinking a lot.
[00:01:59] Indeed, Thomas Cook had to issue a warning in 2022 to British holidaymakers to Spain that their supposed “unlimited drinks” were in fact going to be limited to six per day.
[00:02:13] Now, you might think that six alcoholic drinks a day sounds like a serious amount, and nobody should ever reach that number, but let me tell you that this was enough of a surprise to British holidaymakers that it made headline news.
[00:02:30] And on the subject of surprises, let me tell you that Thomas Cook the man, the original founder of the company, would be turning in his grave, he would be very upset, if he found out that his name was being used to advertise and promote drinking alcohol.
[00:02:49] Why?
[00:02:50] Well, because his eponymous, company, Thomas Cook, was founded as a way to encourage people to stop drinking.
[00:02:59] He was a man on a mission, and that mission was simple: stop people getting drunk.
[00:03:07] To understand why this was, to understand why this mission led him to founding this company, we must do three things: first, we must spend some time reflecting on what life was like in 19th century Britain for working people, then briefly talk about the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution, and then look at Thomas Cook the man.
[00:03:32] So, what was life like in 19th century Britain?
[00:03:36] Well, for the vast majority of the population, it was pretty grim, it wasn't much fun.
[00:03:42] There had been a mass migration of people from the countryside to the industrial cities, where people lived together in cramped housing, working 12 hour days and with one day off a week if they were lucky.
[00:03:56] There simply wasn’t much free time, and the free time there was was typically spent drinking alcohol.
[00:04:03] Work in the factories from dawn until dusk, Monday to Saturday, then go to the pub on a Saturday night to blow your wages, to spend your money on beer and whisky.
[00:04:15] This was how most people working in mid-19th century Britain lived their lives.
[00:04:21] Now, if you’re thinking, “don’t people in Britain still do this?”, sure, you'd be partly right, but it was so much more widespread during the Victorian Era than it is today.
[00:04:33] Drunkenness was a huge issue, and with it violence, which was often directed at poor men’s wives as they returned home after a heavy night of drinking.
[00:04:45] So, that’s our first factor, a working population with little to no “free time”, and one that used alcohol as its primary method of relaxation and leisure.
[00:04:58] Secondly, we must talk about the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution.
[00:05:04] And the most important factor here was the invention of the steam train and the railways.
[00:05:11] The world’s first railway dates back to 1825, when a man called George Stephenson connected two towns in the northeast of England by railway.
[00:05:23] Within 25 years, there was 10,000 kilometres of railway throughout the country, and most major towns were connected. Importantly, it was cheap, it was relatively affordable.
[00:05:37] Why was this important?
[00:05:39] Well, it meant that, for the first time in history, it was comparatively easy, affordable and fast to travel from one place to another, and travel, after all, is what tourism is all about.
[00:05:54] And this brings us to the man we’re talking about today, Thomas Cook.
[00:05:59] He was born in 1808 in Melbourne.
[00:06:03] No, not Melbourne, Australia; Melbourne, Derbyshire, a market town in the middle of England.
[00:06:10] He grew up towards the end of the Industrial Revolution, and as a consequence he saw its effect on the people around him.
[00:06:20] And what did he see?
[00:06:22] Well, what we talked about a few minutes ago. Men and women working long hours in dangerous and unfulfilling work, and using alcohol as a way of escape.
[00:06:34] Cook left school aged only ten years old, and he immediately got his first job, working as a gardener for a penny a day, before becoming an apprentice woodworker, someone who made wooden furniture.
[00:06:48] His upbringing was a highly religious one; his parents were both devout Baptists, and Cook would follow in their footsteps. He was a preacher in his teenage years, and at the age of twenty he became a full-on missionary, distributing information about the Baptist church and trying to convert people.
[00:07:12] A couple of years later, in 1830, at the age of 22, he discovered the Temperance movement, which was a social movement that campaigned against alcohol and drunkenness.
[00:07:24] He became an advocate of this movement, preaching to anyone who would listen about the dangers of alcohol.
[00:07:32] But clearly, there was a limited impact any one man could have.
[00:07:37] He might persuade a few people to stop drinking, doing the Lord’s work as he believed it was, but this was a problem that affected the entire country.
[00:07:48] So, what could be done about it?
[00:07:51] Well, Thomas Cook had an idea.
[00:07:55] It all started in 1841, when he needed to go to a meeting of Temperance campaigners twenty five kilometres away.
[00:08:04] His plan was to walk there, but he had an idea, and I’m quoting directly:
[00:08:11] “A thought flashed through my brain – what a glorious thing it would be if the newly developed powers of railways and locomotion could be made subservient to the promotion of temperance”
[00:08:25] Or to translate this into plain English, what if we could use trains to encourage people to stop drinking alcohol?
[00:08:33] And so his first trip, or tour, was taking a group of 500 Temperance campaigners on a short railway journey. Easy enough, you might think.
[00:08:46] But Cook sensed the potential.
[00:08:49] It was all well and good taking people to and from Temperance movements, but what if he could provide an alternative to drinking?
[00:08:59] What if he could give working people a way to experience something new, another leisure activity, and most importantly, one that didn’t require alcohol?
[00:09:12] It took several years, and he first focussed his efforts on transporting groups of people to and from Temperance movements across the north of England.
[00:09:22] But clearly, the seed was planted, he had the idea of how to turn this into something bigger.
[00:09:31] He got to work, and by 1845 he had arranged his first package tour, taking a group of 350 people on a railway tour to Scotland.
[00:09:44] Now, this might sound like nothing particularly special to you or me, but at the time it really was revolutionary.
[00:09:54] Tourism as we know it now simply didn’t exist.
[00:09:59] Sure, this wasn’t the first time in history that people travelled to experience something new.
[00:10:05] Even going back to the ancient Egyptians there are records of pharaohs going to visit the pyramids or other famous sites. The Greeks went to consult the Oracle or watch sporting events, and even moving into the 17th century in Britain there was this idea of The Grand Tour, which you can hear about in episode number 176 by the way.
[00:10:28] And, of course, the history of people travelling for religious reasons, for pilgrimage, is as old as time.
[00:10:37] But these types of trips would take a long time, because you’d have to go by carriage, boat, horse, or even by foot, and in the case of the non-religious trips, they were restricted to the wealthiest in society, people who could afford to simply not work for months or years at a time and to take these vastly expensive trips. Cook’s genius, or at least invention, was to open up the ability of experiencing a new place to an entirely new section of society: everyone else.
[00:11:16] Initially, the trips were within the UK, with his most popular route being the tours north, to Scotland.
[00:11:24] Again, to reiterate, although now you can get from Manchester to Glasgow on a train in just over three hours, before Thomas Cook's first excursions, this simply wasn’t something that people did, nor something they had any reason to do.
[00:11:41] As a result, the arrival of Thomas Cook’s groups was quite the spectacle.
[00:11:48] When the trains first arrived in Glasgow station guns were fired, a band was waiting to play a celebratory song, and speeches of praise were read out.
[00:12:00] It really was quite something.
[00:12:03] Thomas Cook was doing exactly as he had hoped - he was providing an alcohol-free leisure alternative, he was giving people the chance to see the world, or at least “the country”, without beer goggles, without a drop of alcohol.
[00:12:20] And his work was not going unnoticed.
[00:12:25] He was asked to help transport workers from the north of England south, to London, for the 1851 Great Exhibition, which you can also learn about in episode number 59 by the way.
[00:12:37] He accepted, he did it, and it’s believed that he successfully transported 150,000 people.
[00:12:45] No mean feat, especially as nobody had ever done anything like this before.
[00:12:52] Up until then, he had only arranged domestic travel, trips within Britain.
[00:12:58] There was the rest of the world to see, but one step at a time.
[00:13:03] In the summer of 1855 he opened his first European route, the so-called “grand circular”, where people would visit Brussels, Cologne, the Rhine, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Strasbourg and Paris, where travellers would go to the 1855 Paris Great Exhibition, before returning to Britain.
[00:13:24] Again, you can do this all on your own relatively easy now, but imagine 170 years ago?
[00:13:32] Not only do you have greater language barriers, but how do you manage the different currencies, where to stay, where to eat, and so on?
[00:13:42] In fact, Cook had initially planned to simply sell the travel ticket, but he had so many people asking him to organise all of the accommodation and food that he agreed, providing everything for five pounds, today’s equivalent of around €500. This was, perhaps, the first “all inclusive package holiday”.
[00:14:08] Actually delivering this was complicated, because he had to arrange deals with hotels, and restaurants, manage different currencies and so on.
[00:14:17] It was very tricky, but he managed it thanks to two innovations.
[00:14:23] Firstly, something called the hotel coupon, which travellers could use to pay for food and rooms at various partner hotels.
[00:14:31] And then a few years later something called the circular note, which was a piece of paper that travellers could exchange for local currency. A bit like a traveller’s cheque.
[00:14:43] By now, Thomas Cook was the biggest tour operator not just in Britain or Europe, but the world. I mean, there wasn’t much competition, but this was a man who pioneered the entire concept of mass tourism.
[00:15:00] And after his European success, the next target was indeed, the world.
[00:15:07] In 1865 it was America, in 1869 he sold a package tour up the River Nile, and in 1873 he completed his own world tour, a 222-day mammoth trip going west from London to the United States, across North America, across the Pacific to Japan, then working his way through China, India, up through the Suez Canal and back to London.
[00:15:37] And soon enough this was a tour he also offered to his customers, costing 200 guineas, which is today’s equivalent of around €20,000.
[00:15:49] Sure, not affordable to all, but a remarkable achievement that this was even something that he was able to offer.
[00:15:58] By this time, however, he was growing old, and the day-to-day running of the business was managed by his son, John Cook.
[00:16:07] He died in 1892 at the ripe old age of 83, which was pretty good going as British life expectancy at the time was a measly 47 years.
[00:16:19] And in terms of the legacy he left, well clearly there is the company named after him, which has gone through various booms and busts, and is now only a travel agency, after going bankrupt in 2019.
[00:16:34] But what he really left behind is something more than the Thomas Cook name.
[00:16:40] It’s the invention of mass tourism, it’s the idea that there is value in visiting new places, having new experiences, and seeing something new.
[00:16:51] Sure, seeing new places didn’t start with Thomas Cook, and the tourism industry would have certainly boomed without Thomas Cook.
[00:17:00] And his motivations for getting started might not have been anything to do with tourism; they might have been religious, in a bid to rid the country of the scourge of alcohol abuse, and as anyone who has been on a Thomas Cook holiday will know, Thomas Cook package holidays are certainly not alcohol free.
[00:17:20] So he might have failed if judged by his own “Temperance” standards.
[00:17:26] But in terms of increasing the accessibility of tourism, his achievements were seismic; he opened people’s eyes to the wonder of tourism, and crucially, made it available and accessible to people who had never had the opportunity to experience it before.
[00:17:45] So next time you go on holiday, perhaps you’ll spare a thought for this pioneer, the man who can quite rightly be called The Father of Modern Tourism.
[00:17:59] OK then, that is it for today's episode this brief look into the life and times of Thomas Cook and The Birth of Modern Tourism.
[00:18:08] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:18:12] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:16] Did you know about Thomas Cook before?
[00:18:19] If you’re from a part of the world with lots of British tourists, what are your first thoughts when you hear the name “Thomas Cook”? I imagine they weren’t “promoter of an alcohol-free lifestyle”.
[00:18:31] And what do you think about modern mass tourism?
[00:18:34] What do you think Thomas Cook would say if he could see the impact of the tourism industry today?
[00:18:41] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:18:44] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:18:53] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:18:58] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
