Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy be
Speaker 1: Wilson and Tracy. We have been traveling a lot lately.
Speaker 1: I've been traveling a whole bunch and because of that,
Speaker 1: I just started thinking, particularly when we were on our
Speaker 1: trip to Paris, which was booked as a package, about
Speaker 1: how package travel started. Yeah, Because like I often found
Speaker 1: myself marveling at the people who managed our trips through
Speaker 1: defined destinations. We're just handling the needs of fifty people
Speaker 1: who all had differing desires and internal clocks and whatnot.
Speaker 1: As we wandered around in a foreign country, and sometimes
Speaker 1: people got lost and they always managed to find them
Speaker 1: and get I was just I marveled at the whole concept.
Speaker 1: So that made me start to think about how this
Speaker 1: whole thing began. And as I dug it did not
Speaker 1: take very long to find the per and that most
Speaker 1: people point to and say, this is a person who
Speaker 1: started it. But I was surprised because the man most
Speaker 1: often referenced as the father of the modern travel industry
Speaker 1: was inspired not by some deep seated yearn to go
Speaker 1: out and explore the world, but it was more inspired
Speaker 1: by his support of the Temperance movement and his deeply
Speaker 1: held religious beliefs. So today we were talking about Thomas Cook,
Speaker 1: but we're also talking about his son, John Mason Cook. Uh.
Speaker 1: Modern travelers in the UK in particular are probably well
Speaker 1: acquainted with the Cook name is now the name of
Speaker 1: one of the largest travel agencies in the world, if
Speaker 1: not the largest. But their family were really pioneers of
Speaker 1: this idea of a travel agency to manage tourist holidays
Speaker 1: and put together packages that could be sold for all
Speaker 1: of your needs to be attended to. You just buy
Speaker 1: one thing and then it's taken care of. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: didn't start that way. That happened incrementally before they got
Speaker 1: to the buy your one thing idea, but it really
Speaker 1: you do see the progression of how this concept started
Speaker 1: and how it it started to add on different pieces
Speaker 1: until it became package travel. Thomas Cooke was born on
Speaker 1: November twenty, eighteen o eight, in Derbyshire, England. His parents,
Speaker 1: John and Elizabeth Cook were very poor and John worked
Speaker 1: as a laborer. Died when Thomas was just four years old.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth remarried to James Smith third not long after John's death.
Speaker 1: Thomas's formal education was rather brief. He attended school only
Speaker 1: until the age of ten, and at that point he
Speaker 1: started working as a helper to an estate gardener and
Speaker 1: he worked in that position for four years, at which
Speaker 1: point he became a cabinetry apprentice under his uncle John Peg.
Speaker 1: When young Thomas became an apprentice, he also switched religious denominations.
Speaker 1: Up until the age of fourteen, Thomas had attended a
Speaker 1: Methodist Sunday school and that was intended to offer a
Speaker 1: little bit of a supplemental education since he had to
Speaker 1: go to work full time to help the family, and
Speaker 1: that was a common pattern. Sunday schools in England during
Speaker 1: this time were intended to offer children a small amount
Speaker 1: of ongoing education after they were required to join the workforce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very different I think from what we might think of
Speaker 1: a Sunday school today. Um, not as much. I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly there was religious uh study involved, but it was
Speaker 1: also literally like sort of a standard education that was
Speaker 1: getting conveyed. But though he had been attending Methodist Sunday
Speaker 1: school for four years, at fourteen, Thomas started attending a
Speaker 1: Baptist Sunday School John Peg. His new person that he
Speaker 1: was apprenticing under was a Baptist, so that may have
Speaker 1: had some influence in the switch, but Thomas's mother also
Speaker 1: wanted her son to change churches. It appears that Thomas
Speaker 1: was very diligent in his studies at this new school,
Speaker 1: and he eventually started teaching there. He was eventually named
Speaker 1: it superintendent. He hadn't been baptized yet, though that didn't
Speaker 1: happen until February of eighteen twenty six, when he was seventeen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of ties into that idea that Sunday school
Speaker 1: is not the way we would think of Sunday school
Speaker 1: in like modern America, for example. It really was not
Speaker 1: quite the same deal. And I only know Catechism, which
Speaker 1: is different than other religions Sunday schools, so I'm sure
Speaker 1: I have a very um different concept of how the
Speaker 1: whole thing works. Uh. Cook's religious devotion eventually supplanted his
Speaker 1: 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 Marianne Mason, another Sunday school teacher who
Speaker 1: was a year older than Thomas. Thomas and Marianne were
Speaker 1: sweethearts for four years before they got married on March second,
Speaker 1: thirty three. That's another thing that made me chuckle. In
Speaker 1: some of the uh biographical writeups of him, people will
Speaker 1: talk about what a long courtship that was. Where it's
Speaker 1: again in the modern era of not so much uh.
Speaker 1: Not only did Thomas's bachelor's status change to that of
Speaker 1: husband in eighteen thirty three, he also changed jobs. He
Speaker 1: returned to carpentry. His job as a missionary had ended
Speaker 1: because the church could no longer fund his salary, so
Speaker 1: he moved with Marianne to Market Harborough and opened up
Speaker 1: a shop. On January thirty four. They welcomed his son,
Speaker 1: John Mason Cook. In eighteen thirty five. They had another
Speaker 1: child named Henry, but the second son died while still
Speaker 1: a baby. They didn't have any more children until the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen forties, when their daughter Annie was born. In
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six, the Cooks took a strong stand for temperance.
Speaker 1: They felt that liquor was causing all manner of social problems.
Speaker 1: This was a pretty popularly circulated idea at the time,
Speaker 1: and they decided that they wanted to lead by example
Speaker 1: in their own lives. So they both signed a pledge
Speaker 1: of temperance, and they also vowed that no one who
Speaker 1: worked for them would have access to alcohol while on
Speaker 1: their property. But Thomas was not content to do just that.
Speaker 1: He started really throwing his time and his efforts into
Speaker 1: promoting temperance. In the latter half of the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: Cook reached back to his preaching days. At this time,
Speaker 1: he started to preach the importance of temperance and the
Speaker 1: dangers of alcohol. He wrote and distributed pamphlets with these
Speaker 1: same messages. He also started setting up recreational events that
Speaker 1: were alcohol free. They were social gatherings called rational recreation,
Speaker 1: where the activities were wholesome and the hardest liquid serve
Speaker 1: was ginger beer. He also founded a periodical called the
Speaker 1: Children's Temperance Magazine in eighteen forty and it was Cook's
Speaker 1: temperance efforts and his desire to put together activities that
Speaker 1: would offer fun and socializing without alcohol that led him
Speaker 1: to start setting up travel activities. In June of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty one, while he was walking to a Temperance meeting
Speaker 1: in Lester, near his home, he had a bolt of inspiration.
Speaker 1: He realized that developments in transportation that had been part
Speaker 1: of the Industrial Revolution, and in particular railroads, could be
Speaker 1: used to spread the word about Temperance farther than ever before.
Speaker 1: He was walking to a meeting in Lester when he
Speaker 1: had this idea, and when he got there, Cook outlined
Speaker 1: as planned the attendees. He pitched the plan that they
Speaker 1: would hire a train specifically to get their members to
Speaker 1: another meeting farther away the next month. Everybody thought this
Speaker 1: was a great idea, so he reached out to the
Speaker 1: Midland Railway to try to make the arrangements and they
Speaker 1: were completely open to it. So on July fivet one,
Speaker 1: just a month after he had his idea, Thomas led
Speaker 1: a group of five hundred members of the Temperance movement
Speaker 1: on a trip. It was a train ride from Leicester
Speaker 1: to Leughtboro to attend a meeting in a lecture there,
Speaker 1: and each attendee paid a shilling for the trip that
Speaker 1: was arranged by Cook. And this trip went very, very smoothly,
Speaker 1: and its success led Cook to plan for more. I
Speaker 1: just want to say, five people is a lot of people.
Speaker 1: That is a lot of people. I'm mentioned at the
Speaker 1: top of the show how I marveled at managing fifty
Speaker 1: people on a trip. Five hundred seems bananas. To bolster
Speaker 1: the whole enterprise, Cook wanted to be in a bigger
Speaker 1: city to have greater access to travel resources. So to
Speaker 1: that end, he and his family moved to Leicester. The
Speaker 1: Temperance and Baptist community there was much larger, and he
Speaker 1: was also able to expand his business with an id
Speaker 1: using these businesses to promote Temperance. He started printing temperance
Speaker 1: literature in his own print shop and he also opened
Speaker 1: a bookstore to sell that literature in He also printed
Speaker 1: and sold guide books and almanacs through this system, and
Speaker 1: next he opened to Temperance hotels. The first in Derby
Speaker 1: was managed by his mother Elizabeth, and his wife Mary
Speaker 1: Anne managed the second, which was in Lester. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how Thomas transitioned from wrangling groups of
Speaker 1: temperance supporters to managing travel as a business, but first
Speaker 1: we'll pause for a sponsor break. Thomas Cook had since
Speaker 1: that first rail trip from Leicester to Leftboro in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty one, continued to arrange trips for temperance supporters to
Speaker 1: attend meetings and share their ideology throughout England. But in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty five he decided to actually make a business
Speaker 1: out of it, running tours for profit. He had a
Speaker 1: really good network of contacts within the railways at this point,
Speaker 1: and he had already made a name for himself as
Speaker 1: an efficient and trustworthy organizer of group excursions, so he
Speaker 1: was starting this enterprise from a very strong position. Cook's
Speaker 1: first for profit itinerary went to Liverpool, with starting points
Speaker 1: for travelers at Leicester, Derby and Nottingham. This included excursions
Speaker 1: to Canarvon and a hike up Mount Snowdon. He was
Speaker 1: conscious of the fact that even on his previous temperance
Speaker 1: oriented trips, for a lot of the people traveling it
Speaker 1: was a really new experience, and to that end he
Speaker 1: produced a handbook for the three d fifty people on
Speaker 1: this Liverpool tour, offering them both practical whole advice and
Speaker 1: encouragement to abstain from drink while enjoying the journey. This
Speaker 1: handbook was the first of many he assembled them for
Speaker 1: all of us tours after this point. First class tickets
Speaker 1: cost fifteen shillings and second class was ten shillings. Travelers
Speaker 1: could also opt into a steamer cruise to North Wales
Speaker 1: for an additional fee. The Liverpool Tour was a far
Speaker 1: more ambitious project than any of Thomas Cook's Temperance trips
Speaker 1: had been, but it went well. So well the Cooks
Speaker 1: started to set his sights on expanding to new destinations,
Speaker 1: and he decided, after he had done some of these
Speaker 1: Liverpool trips that the next excursion he wanted to offer
Speaker 1: would go to Scotland. The Scotland Tour was scheduled for
Speaker 1: the summer of eighteen forty six, and it was Thomas
Speaker 1: Cook's first real flop since he started planning group travel.
Speaker 1: The several hundred people who had booked had been told
Speaker 1: that they would be able to disembark from the train
Speaker 1: they were on when it made stops along the way
Speaker 1: to the coast, and there they were going to board
Speaker 1: a steamer to Scotland, but it turned that train passengers
Speaker 1: were not allowed to get off and on it stops.
Speaker 1: The train also didn't have bathrooms and it didn't offer
Speaker 1: food service, so by the time the group got to
Speaker 1: the coast they were already miserable. The next leg of
Speaker 1: the trip was aboard the steamer or Drawson, which was
Speaker 1: also a problem. Cook had booked more people than there
Speaker 1: were cabins. There appears to have been a miscommunication between
Speaker 1: him and the steamer uh so some of the group
Speaker 1: had to hang out on the deck and they got
Speaker 1: drenched in a storm that came along while they made
Speaker 1: this crossing. But once the group arrived in Scotland, they
Speaker 1: were warmly welcomed with marching bands and other fanfare, and
Speaker 1: from that point it seems to have gone okay. Reviews
Speaker 1: of this tour were unsurprisingly unkind. Part of the criticism
Speaker 1: was Thomas Cook's unrelenting devotion to temperance, which he preached
Speaker 1: to all his tour groups. This summer of problems caused
Speaker 1: a temporary halt to Cook's travel business. He was also
Speaker 1: seeing new competitors emerged in the publishing market, some of
Speaker 1: whom were printing books and pamphlets on Temperance as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he had he had kind of planned on this
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 was 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 a 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 Herald, an excursion advertiser. This effort to create Exposition
Speaker 1: tours was incidentally made it the urging of previous podcast
Speaker 1: subject and Crystal List 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. Paxston 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: And as his travel business grew, Thomas Cook ceased operation
Speaker 1: of his printing efforts so that he could focus more
Speaker 1: on tourism. He still printed guide books, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: running his own print shop. After a decade of growth
Speaker 1: and expansion within his established roots, Cook expanded his offerings
Speaker 1: to a wider range of destinations on the European continent.
Speaker 1: This was in part because his tours in Scotland ran
Speaker 1: into a problem, which is that the rail companies in
Speaker 1: Scotland stopped offering him discounted group rates for the trains.
Speaker 1: And so to expand into this new phase of business
Speaker 1: cooked in two things. First, he opened another office in London.
Speaker 1: Similar to the reasons that he moved to Lester. This
Speaker 1: shift to London offered greater resources and more access to
Speaker 1: a wider clientele. And second, he started creating more comprehensive bookings,
Speaker 1: ones that did include lodging and meals as well as
Speaker 1: railroad travel and channel crossings. In eighteen fifty five, Thomas
Speaker 1: Cook mounted his first European continental tour to coincide with
Speaker 1: another exposition, this time the Exposition Universale in Paris. This
Speaker 1: trip hit a lot of other spots before landing at
Speaker 1: the expo, though from England, the group traveled to Antwerp, Brussels, Cologne,
Speaker 1: Heidelberg and Strasbourg before finishing in Paris. And addition into
Speaker 1: booking the trip as a comprehensive package, he also offered
Speaker 1: a currency exchange service to his travelers, yea At this point,
Speaker 1: he was offering literally like full service travel. By the
Speaker 1: fall of eighteen sixty three, Cook had book travel to
Speaker 1: Switzerland for an estimated five hundred tourists and to France
Speaker 1: for about two thousand. The rapid growth of his expanded
Speaker 1: offerings led to Cook being nicknamed the Napoleon of excursions,
Speaker 1: and before long a Cook's tour became synonymous with guided
Speaker 1: tourist experiences. In eighteen sixty five, the business shifted once again,
Speaker 1: this time because Cook's son, John Mason Cook, started working
Speaker 1: for the firm full time. Over the next six years,
Speaker 1: John helped his father expand the company significantly, so that
Speaker 1: by eighteen seventy one there were three offices for the
Speaker 1: firm in England, each with a full staff. John was
Speaker 1: made partner that year and the firm became Thomas Cook
Speaker 1: and Son. John had been highly instrumental in getting Cook's
Speaker 1: company into booking travel across the Atlantic, and he had
Speaker 1: streamlined the way the business rands make everything more efficient.
Speaker 1: But even so, John had been really reluctant to step
Speaker 1: into the role of partner. After the popularity of Thomas
Speaker 1: Cook and Son's offering for travel to France and Switzerland,
Speaker 1: the firm started offering tours to Italy as well. As
Speaker 1: we mentioned, John helped get across the Atlantic, so a
Speaker 1: United States itinerary was soon made available, and then they
Speaker 1: offered trips to Egypt and Israel. And as Cook's travel
Speaker 1: agency entered the eighteen seventies, he was as always thinking
Speaker 1: bigger in terms of where he could go. The advertisements
Speaker 1: for the company at this point read a Cook's Ticket
Speaker 1: brings the World to you, and Thomas Cook seemed really
Speaker 1: intent on delivering on that promise. It was this attitude
Speaker 1: that led him to offer the first ever Round the
Speaker 1: World tourist itinerary. It was ambitious, but Cook was driven
Speaker 1: by 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 eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three. It took two hundred twenty two days, and
Speaker 1: his being there was possible in part because he had
Speaker 1: John to manage the offices back home. But despite trusting
Speaker 1: John to handle a lot of the business. Thomas and
Speaker 1: his son had problems, and we are going to get
Speaker 1: into that after we take a break and hear from
Speaker 1: one of the sponsors that keeps stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: history class going. Thomas and John Cook did not always
Speaker 1: agree on how their business should run, even though John
Speaker 1: was made a partner, and this ultimately caused serious problems there.
Speaker 1: I read some historians that suggested that like the two
Speaker 1: of them had such different approaches that they would have
Speaker 1: been terribly complimentary if it weren't for the fact that
Speaker 1: they were continuously butting heads. Uh So. While Thomas was
Speaker 1: shepherding that First World Tour, for example, John settled the
Speaker 1: firm's main offices into a new, fancier and more expensive location.
Speaker 1: When Thomas returned, the travel agency started a business partnership
Speaker 1: with an American partner, and that turned disastrous. The idea
Speaker 1: was that combining their efforts with a business interest on
Speaker 1: the other side of the Atlantic was going to bolster
Speaker 1: travel bookings from North America to Europe and vice versa,
Speaker 1: but that did not work out. Over the next several years,
Speaker 1: Thomas and John were increasingly at odds and the US
Speaker 1: partnership fell apart, which added even more strain to the relationship.
Speaker 1: Even as they successfully moved on to new ventures, including
Speaker 1: offering cruises, they didn't seem to celebrate as much as
Speaker 1: they seemed to argue, and the main issue between them
Speaker 1: was that they just felt completely differently as I said,
Speaker 1: about how their business should run. Thomas had always dreamed
Speaker 1: big in terms of trips, but he wasn't especially concerned
Speaker 1: with turning huge profits as long as they were making
Speaker 1: some profit. He basically seemed to just want enough to
Speaker 1: provide for his family and then donate pretty generously to
Speaker 1: the various charities that he supported. John, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: envisioned much grander things. He really believed that they could
Speaker 1: be much more financially lucrative, and he thought that his
Speaker 1: father's approach to business was too soft and inefficient and
Speaker 1: that his father was a little bit of a billy dreamer. Additionally,
Speaker 1: John wanted Thomas to keep his religious and temperance views
Speaker 1: out of their tours and maintain those interests as personal matters,
Speaker 1: not business. This strife between Thomas and John wasn't exactly new.
Speaker 1: It had basically been there ever since John was young.
Speaker 1: There was a time as a very young man just
Speaker 1: out of school, when John had worked in Thomas's print
Speaker 1: shop and had worked on some of the tours, but
Speaker 1: the two of them had butted heads so often that
Speaker 1: John left to work for a railway company. Even when
Speaker 1: John returned to work for his father in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: it had been because he had a wife and a
Speaker 1: child to support, not because the two of them actually
Speaker 1: wanted to work together. Things eventually came to a head
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy eight and father and son had a
Speaker 1: massive fight. The end result, although we don't have details
Speaker 1: on how exactly this decision was reached, was that Thomas
Speaker 1: removed himself from the business entirely. He moved full time
Speaker 1: back to Lester, where he had built a large house,
Speaker 1: and he just let John run things as he wished,
Speaker 1: but their relationship was damaged beyond repair. As the firm
Speaker 1: was transitioning in leadership from father to son, John established
Speaker 1: a new department at the firm, foreign Banking and Money Exchange,
Speaker 1: and then through this division, the company started issuing credit
Speaker 1: notes for travelers, which evolved into travelers checks. It has
Speaker 1: proved to be a very lucrative enterprise that makes traveler's
Speaker 1: checks older than I imagined. Yeah, I think they were
Speaker 1: first calling them circular checks. Uh. And yeah, they eventually
Speaker 1: set this up again. John, I mean, was very smart
Speaker 1: about business, and his father was very smart about putting
Speaker 1: the other 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 to electing
Speaker 1: new 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. Uh. John also negotiated government contracts
Speaker 1: for Thomas Cook and Son. So when England sent a
Speaker 1: force to relieve Major General Charles George Gordon, who had
Speaker 1: become embroiled in a conflict with the Mahdi of Sudan
Speaker 1: in the city of Khartoum, against the government's wishes, that
Speaker 1: trip was managed by Thomas Cook and Son. Incidentally, that
Speaker 1: relief effort arrived too late, Gordon's stronghold had fallen and
Speaker 1: he had already been killed. That is a whole other
Speaker 1: potential podcast episode. Under John Mason Cook, the firm also
Speaker 1: transported Indian royalty to London to celebrate the queens to
Speaker 1: jubilees and what seemed 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: Cooks bears were too high that deal and did. Thomas
Speaker 1: and his wife Mary Anne lived in his retirement, during
Speaker 1: which he was getting a pension from his son, with
Speaker 1: their daughter Annie, who had never married, and two years
Speaker 1: after they moved into the house that was called Thorncroft.
Speaker 1: That was that large house that Thomas had built in Leicester.
Speaker 1: There was a tragic loss when Annie died in her bathtub.
Speaker 1: The gas fumes from a new heater were determined to
Speaker 1: have been the cause, and Thomas's wife, Mary Anne died
Speaker 1: four years later in eighteen eighty four. Thomas Cook continued
Speaker 1: his life quietly outside of the company. He continued to
Speaker 1: travel and to work with the church in the Temperance movement.
Speaker 1: He did eventually lose his sight. In one Thomas, Cook
Speaker 1: and son celebrated the company silver jubilee. Thomas did not attend,
Speaker 1: although it is unknown whether that was his choice, perhaps
Speaker 1: because his health was not great or because his son
Speaker 1: did not want him there. The firm celebrated their immense
Speaker 1: success without their founder. At that point, the company had
Speaker 1: eighty four offices and more than employees, and the next
Speaker 1: in line to run things were John three sons. Although
Speaker 1: John continued to head things up for a while, and
Speaker 1: he even expanded the company once again to include a
Speaker 1: fleet of steamers that offered Nile River cruises. John did
Speaker 1: make a move that seemed a little bit more like
Speaker 1: something his father would have done when he paid for
Speaker 1: a hospital to be built in Egypt. The year after
Speaker 1: the company's celebration, Thomas died that was on July. He
Speaker 1: had had a stroke. He was buried in Leicester on July.
Speaker 1: As obituary in The Times referred to him and John
Speaker 1: as the Julius and Augustus Caesar of travel. Thomas's will
Speaker 1: was at odds with his existing worth. At the time
Speaker 1: of his death. His estate was worth roughly dred pounds,
Speaker 1: but the amount that he bequeathed in his will was
Speaker 1: four thousand, two hundred twenty five pounds, which has left
Speaker 1: some historians puzzling over what exactly happened to the great
Speaker 1: fortune that he had made, and while he was very
Speaker 1: generous throughout his life, believing that it was his duty
Speaker 1: as a religious man to help others in need. For example,
Speaker 1: he had arranged everything from soup kitchens to the building
Speaker 1: of cottage for the poor over the years. Uh there
Speaker 1: is still a lot of puzzling over how exactly he
Speaker 1: ended up with so little. John didn't even break stride
Speaker 1: in terms of business after his father died. He had
Speaker 1: become very much a social climber, and whenever any royalty
Speaker 1: books travel with the firm, he personally escorted them during
Speaker 1: their journey. When the first modern Olympic Games took place
Speaker 1: in Athens in eighteen ninety six, John made sure that
Speaker 1: the Cook firm was their travel partner. In eighteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: while escorton Kaiserville, Hell in the second on a trip
Speaker 1: to the Holy Land, John Cook became ill, most likely
Speaker 1: with dysenterry, and though John returned home, he continued to
Speaker 1: be unwell for several months leading up to his death
Speaker 1: on March six. Johnson's Frank Ernest and Burt took over
Speaker 1: the travel agency and it's many offices, and the company
Speaker 1: continued to flourish. They kept printing The Excursionist, although the
Speaker 1: name was changed to Travelers Gazette, and in nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: they became the first UK travel agent to offer air bookings.
Speaker 1: Thomas Cook's grandsons sold the business in to a Belgian
Speaker 1: firm for three point five million pounds, and the firm
Speaker 1: that Cook started still exists under the name Thomas Cook,
Speaker 1: although in recent times it has had some struggles. In
Speaker 1: May of this year, which is The Guardian reported that
Speaker 1: the company lost one point five billion euros due to
Speaker 1: bregit 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 Folson 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 bears his name. It
Speaker 1: was really Thomas Cook that set the stage for the
Speaker 1: industry of tourism as we know it today. Whenever he
Speaker 1: selected a destination as an offering, it became a standard
Speaker 1: vacation spot for his clients. And this way he planted
Speaker 1: the seeds of this industry which now drives the economies
Speaker 1: of many countries and many individual places within countries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really fascinating to think about. Like he would basically say, like,
Speaker 1: I think we should start going to Switzerland, and people
Speaker 1: would start going to Switzerland, and then towns that he
Speaker 1: went to in Switzerland would be like, we have a
Speaker 1: booming tourist economy, we should court tourism, and like that
Speaker 1: cycle would happen over and over and over. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in many ways, he really ended up kind of shifting
Speaker 1: the way that that various areas managed their their economics
Speaker 1: because that, again, tourism is a big business. Um. Do
Speaker 1: you want to hear about a fun card? I sure do.
Speaker 1: Is very very cute. Uh, it is from our listeners
Speaker 1: Shelby and Shelby has the most spectacular penmanship. She rises
Speaker 1: dear Holly and Tracy, I've listened to stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class for years, even before y'all were the hosts.
Speaker 1: I have always loved history, and I have learned so
Speaker 1: much from the podcast. I've wanted to write in and
Speaker 1: send you something for a long time, but only recently
Speaker 1: finally found something I thought you might like. It's stickers
Speaker 1: of cats and space. I don't have a cat, but
Speaker 1: I know y'all are big fans of felines. Hope you
Speaker 1: like them. Thanks for all your hard work, UH informing
Speaker 1: me and many others throughout the years. She writes, PS,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of non feline space stickers, but
Speaker 1: they also still reminded me of y'all. And then PPS.
Speaker 1: I don't have any pets currently, but I do love
Speaker 1: drawing them and I do commissions occasionally. You can check
Speaker 1: out her instagram, which is at artful Vice. She doesn't
Speaker 1: really really beautiful work, and these cat stickers are adorable,
Speaker 1: and it really is sort of the intersection of so
Speaker 1: many things that delight me that um, I could not
Speaker 1: be more enthused. I love them so she'd have heard
Speaker 1: to think of us. Thank you so much, Shelby. I
Speaker 1: love the stickers. Thank you for them with Tracy when
Speaker 1: she comes in a couple of weeks UH, and we
Speaker 1: will get them all sorted out. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to us, you should do that. You can
Speaker 1: do it at history podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on social media as Missed
Speaker 1: in History pretty much everywhere. Missed in History dot com
Speaker 1: is also where to go if you want to visit
Speaker 1: us online, and there you will find an archive of
Speaker 1: every episode that has ever existed. UH. If you would
Speaker 1: like to subscribe to the podcast, we would like you
Speaker 1: to subscribe to the podcast. You can do that on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: else you listen. Stuffy Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios how stuff Works. For more podcasts.
Speaker 1: For my heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.