The birth of Tourism!


In Britain every January there is a time of activity among most of the population as holiday travel occupies the thoughts of those with the money to spend.
While today's sun seekers are frequently seen as hedonistic escapists, stereotyped as irresponsible, drunken and loutish, the originator of the package holiday was a staunch teetotal, anti-smoking Victorian Nonconformist steeped in the Protestant work ethic.

This article is about the man who is regarded as “the father of tourism”, a forgotten hero of the 19th century. Thomas Cook was born in Melbourne, on the border of Leicestershire and Derbyshire, in a time of great change. Driven by his Baptist faith and passion for the Temperance movement he was a power house of activity. I have just finished reading Jill Hamilton’s book “Thomas Cook, The Holiday Maker” which is interesting since it views this man’s life from a non-Christian stand point.

The minister who baptised Thomas at the age of 17, was Rev. H. Joseph Foulkes Winks. Winks was an articulate pulpit man and prolific printer who became a father figure to Thomas. A true campaigner for right he was active in helping to abolish cock fighting, dog fighting and he was nicked named “Gibbet Parson Winks”, as he campaigned against the use of the gibbet , the wooden structure from which criminals were hung. Eventually Winks moved his printing enterprise to the High Street in Leicester and in 1839 was appointed the Pastor of Carley Street Baptist Church where he served until his death aged 72 in 1860.

Hence the link with this writer who was converted in that same chapel in 1957 and who eventually became the Pastor from July 1985 to March 2000.

Thomas Cook spent some time as an Evangelist and travelled through three counties with the Gospel message. In 1829 he records that he clocked up 2,692 miles and over 2,106 were walked! Some of our present day preachers and full time pastors could learn much from this man’s dedication and endurance.

His involvement with the Temperance movement in Leicester was to lead him into organising travel to get supporters to large meetings in other towns. On 5 July 1841 the Leicester Chronicle reports that 500 respectably-dressed, and apparently happy teetotallers were taken from Campbell Street Railway Station, Leicester to Loughborough in one second-class carriage and nine third-class carriages.

Within two months of this Temperance train Thomas and his wife moved from Market Harborough into Leicester then regarded as the “Metropolis of Dissent”. Nonconformists were making their mark on society and no longer were town councils in the control of the landed gentry. While the men of vision were building the railways across the country, the men of faith were making a difference in the lives of the people.

The Leicester to Swannington Railway in 1832 was the third railway to be completed in Britain, soon the railway would be built joining Leicester to London and links made to other major cities. By 1850, 6,000 miles of railway track had been laid and travel became affordable for the working classes. With Thomas now working as a printer, as was his fellow Baptist Winks, he was advertising cheap travel by train to large cities, so the tourist industry was born with the masses seeing that travel was not just for the rich. Soon excursions were going to the Great Exhibition in London of 1850 and within a few years guided trips to Egypt and the Holy land. Tourism was born! Cook's aim was to bring cheap travel to the working classes,

In the year 1884-85, the Thomas Cook and son, John Mason Cook, transported the Anglo-Egyptian army on an expedition to rescue Charles Gordon from Khartoum.

For those wanting to do their own study I would commend the following websites.
www.thomascook.com/corporate/press.asp?page=studentpack
www.travellersinegypt.org/archives/2004/09/thomas_cook_son.html

and for some recommended reading
Thomas Cook: The Holiday-Maker by Jill Hamilton
Thomas Cook of Leicester by Robert Ingle

The more I look back into the lives of these old saints, the more I am aware of the impact that these men of faith had on the society in which they lived. And I am prompted to ask the question: “How am I influencing the people in my generation?”.

Am I making a difference?