20 Facts About Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook was born into a poor family in Derbyshire and left school at the age of ten to start work as a gardener's boy.

Thomas Cook served an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker before becoming an itinerant Baptist preacher.

Thomas Cook was a supporter of the temperance movement and his first foray into tourism was a railway excursion to Loughborough for members of the Leicester Temperance Society in 1841.

Thomas Cook is credited with having, through his all-inclusive tours, made travel and tourism accessible to a wider public.

Thomas Cook was born on 22 November 1808 to Elizabeth and John Cook, who lived in a small cottage in Quick Close in the village of Melbourne, Derbyshire.

Thomas Cook's father was a labourer who died when Cook was four years old; his mother was the daughter of a New Connexion Baptist preacher.

At the age of 10, Thomas Cook left school and started working as a gardener's boy on Lord Melbourne's estate, while continuing his education at Sunday School and later becoming a Sunday School teacher.

The couple married on 3 March 1833 at St Peter's Church, Barrowden and set up home in Market Harborough in Leicestershire, with Thomas Cook working as a wood-tujarner.

In 1836, both he and Marianne signed the pledge and Thomas Cook became active in campaigning for abstention from alcohol.

Thomas Cook's plan came to fruition on 5 July 1841, when he took a party of 485 members of the Leicester Temperance Society on a rail excursion from Leicester Campbell Street Railway Station to Loughborough to attend a temperance meeting.

Thomas Cook charged passengers one shilling each to cover the cost of hiring a train from the Midland Counties Railway.

Later in the year 1841, Thomas Cook moved to Leicester and set up as a bookseller and printer.

Thomas Cook ran two temperance hotels with his wife and his mother.

In 1862, Scottish railway companies stopped issuing cheap group tickets for tour groups and Thomas Cook turned his attention further afield, to Switzerland and Italy, the United States, Egypt and the Holy Land.

In 1865, Thomas Cook acquired business premises on Fleet Street in London.

Thomas Cook made his first round-the-world tour in 1874, and the same year advertised an annual conducted trip for 200 guineas.

Thomas Cook still managed to travel and went to the Holy Land in 1888.

Thomas Cook died following a stroke on 18 July 1892.

Thomas Cook is commemorated in the village of his childhood, Melbourne, by almshouses and a chapel he had built in 1890.

In doing so, Thomas Cook transformed the fields of tourism and leisure.