Thomas Cook (17 page)

As well as transporting thousands of travellers to the exhibition, Thomas decided to provide accommodation. Before the exhibition he tramped the streets of London looking for cheap, clean beds. Most boarding house owners declined to register with him at fixed prices, as they were sure prices would surge when the Great Exhibition finally opened. In the end Thomas gambled and took out a few leases to create lodging houses for the summer. ‘The Ranelagh Club Mechanics Home’, rented from a Mr Thomas Harison in Ranelagh Road, Pimlico, near Vauxhall Bridge, could accommodate a thousand people a night. Here, for 1
s
3
d
a night, each male guest would have a partioned-off area in a dormitory that contained a bedstead with sacking and a good hair mattress, blankets, coverlid (bedcover), soap, towel, ‘every convenience for ablution’ and a key to his unit. The partitions between areas were seven-feet-high boards. Boots and shoes could be cleaned for a penny a pair. Thomas thought of everything, even the warning, ‘Should parties get into that state where they could not look after themselves at night, there would be a policeman in attendance to take care of them that they should not annoy other people.’ To help people pay for their trips, Thomas started ‘travel clubs’ and ‘Exhibition Clubs’ which helped workers save part of their wages. Since the end of the previous century, the numbers of friendly societies that took subscriptions from members and insured them against death, illness and burial expenses had been increasing.
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People could now put sixpence each week into ‘travel clubs’, which would later develop into people paying for their holidays in advance instalments, which was useful in days when there where were no high street banks in small towns and the average weekly wages for men on farms was just under ten shillings.
¹¹

A new monthly magazine
Cook’s Exhibition Herald and Excursion Advertiser
, issued to promote his trips to London for the exhibition, helped generate enthusiasm about forthcoming trips. Thomas’s pen was seldom still. This magazine continued as the
Excursionist
until the Second World War. It provided page after page of itineraries, fares, lists of hotels, testimonial letters, articles about tours, advertisements and editorial comment.
¹²
In an early issue the question was posed, ‘How are working men, their wives and children to get to the Exhibition?’ The answer was in the first paragraph – with Thomas Cook.

Excursions to Scotland were suspended, as six months were needed to make arrangements and obtain bookings. Thomas explained, ‘the whole of the southern division of the line was exclusively offered to me, whilst north of Sheffield I had the chief obligations, two occasional Yorkshire agents being appointed to work with me’.

At last, with the blare of trumpets and all the tradition, glitter and pomp that 32-year-old Albert could muster, the exhibition was opened on May Day, 1 May 1851. The magnificent ceremony was heightened by the excitement of the awed crowds and the presence of the eldest two of their seven children, who stood clutching posies.

Victoria stood erect and stately on a dais encircled by palm trees and people, as the Archbishop of Canterbury said a short prayer and the massive choir and orchestra performed the Hallelujah Chorus from
Messiah
. As always, Victoria was surrounded by a curious, indefinable awe, having raised the popularity of monarchy to a pitch it had not enjoyed before under the Hanoverian dynasty. Plumed hats came off and ceremonial swords out as rope pulleys hauled the Union Jack to the top of the towering flagpole, while the military band struck up the national anthem. Speeches stressed crown and empire and the wonders of being British. Thomas, who managed to be one of the audience of 20,000, described this celebration of British imperial and industrial might as a ‘galaxy of splendour which has burst upon the world’.

We must have
RAILWAYS FOR THE MILLION

Thomas Cook, 1843

A
fter the formal opening of the exhibition, Thomas found he was in the centre of ‘one of the hottest contests ever inspired by railway competition’. Cuttle and Calverly, of Wakefield, had been appointed to cooperate with him in Yorkshire, but ‘the Midland and London & North-Western on one side, and the Great Northern on the other’ were in fierce competition with him. Thomas became desperate when the Great Northern Line reduced its tickets to five shillings, a third of the price of Thomas’s fifteen-shilling fare on the Midland Railways.

Unable to persuade the Midland to reduce its fares, Thomas tore up his contract, but at nine o’clock the fare was down to five shillings from Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield, and other competing points, and it stood at that rate to the close of the Exhibition. Thomas recalled that it ‘was a time of intense excitement, and all the trains on the line, except for the day Express, were made available for excursion tickets. Frequently the night mail would be run in from two to six divisions.’

‘Five shillings to London and back’ was Thomas’s war cry as he threw himself into the race by travelling to Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and Derby with notices on street corners, on factory gates and on a van followed by a brass band. Both he and John Mason laboured well into each night for over three months selling tickets and ferrying the parties to and fro. Thomas later related his sales methods: ‘At the call of a band of music, I saw workpeople come out of factories in Bradford, pay five shillings for a ticket, and with a very few shillings in their pockets start off on Saturday night to spend Sunday and Monday in London, returning to work on Tuesday morning. The people of Yorkshire were thus educated to travel . . .’

The exhibition broke all records. Never before had London had to deal with such huge crowds or had so many people attended one single event. The carnival atmosphere inside the Crystal Palace extended on to grass plots with stalls, sideshows and kiosks selling souvenirs and lemonade. However, its aim to bring all sectors of British society to mingle together under one roof was initially countered by the entrance ticket price of five shillings, limiting it to what
The Times
called ‘the wealthy and the gentility and nobly born’. At the end of May the price was dropped to a shilling.

The Queen applauded Albert’s exhibition by visiting it no less than forty times during the six months it was open.
¹

Thomas, it seems, visited it even more than the Queen. For six months he devoted himself to nothing but the exhibition, rarely sleeping a night at home. As he said, his ‘well-aired bed’ was often the floor of a railway carriage, because many of his exhibition trains to and from London ran through the night. John Mason travelled three or four times a week in each direction between Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and Derby.

Only non-alcoholic beverages were being served at the exhibition – a sensational step forward for Thomas and other Temperance men (there were then around 11,000 spirit shops in London, as against 4,000 butchers and bakers).
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The limitation was criticised by many visitors and
Punch
complained about ‘only ginger-beer’ being served. The phrase ‘spending a penny’ dates from the exhibition, as George Jennings installed something that was then just growing in use, public water-closets, and charged 827,000 users each a penny. These facilities, though, were not backed up with an adequate drainage or sewerage pipes, so cesspools near the Thames overflowed with the massive volume of water. But most consequences of the exhibition, especially for Thomas, were positive.

Seen as a feat of peace and internationalism, a way to combine art, industry and social progress, the exhibition stimulated industrial design and showed the virtues of joining art and science. Exhibits with innovations for manufacturing were a priority. Passionate about science, Albert ruled that objects defined as ‘fine art’ were to be disqualified unless they included some technical expertise. Nevertheless, the exhibits included Augustus Pugin’s ‘medieval court’ of neo-Gothic carpets and tiles, a display by the Religious Tract Society and Novello’s cheap editions of oratorios. Three of the most admired objects were the gas cooker, the sewing machine from America and, as domestic canning was still in its infancy, tinned mutton from Australia.

Thomas, who transported 165,000 people from the Midlands to the exhibition, did not forget the young. Anxious that children should see this ‘unprecedented and never-to-be-rivalled’ show, he escorted 3,000 children and their teachers from the Sunday and day schools of Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby. His new paper the
Excursionist
, the first travel newspaper in the world, allowed him now to be a published author and also to promote his ideas: ‘The Great Exhibition is mainly indebted for its astonishing interest to the skill and industry of mechanics, artisans and other operative classes. And in many instances the honour of invention and execution which properly belongs to those classes is monopolized by the principles of manufacturers (who may be mere noodles) or the wealthy millionaire, whose gold had made him representative of the products of better men’s brains and hands.’

With 112,000 exhibits from 7,381 British and 6,556 foreign exhibitors, the exhibition proved that British factories could cope well with competition. Britain had become the powerhouse of Europe, a kingdom of traders, importers, exporters and factories churning out everything from stockings to machines, all which would be exported to every corner of the earth. Since the abolition of the Corn Laws and the ending of import tariffs on raw materials and foodstuffs, Britain had set out to conquer overseas markets by means of well-made, cheaply produced products. The old Free Trade campaigners saw the exhibition as a triumph, the result of their long struggle. Entrepreneurial skills had turned the British Isles from an agricultural country into an industrial giant.

There were many spin-offs from this, the biggest event of any sort ever held in Britain. One historian suggested that it resulted in ‘the largest movement of population ever to have taken place in Britain’.
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A landmark in international exhibitions, it set the standard for all future similar events throughout Europe, and it also became a milestone in transport. In a way, the exhibition was following the lead of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been one of the first political leaders to be aware of the unifying effect of pomp and ritual.

In England, the exhibition was a precedent for attracting ‘the public’ to gigantic gatherings
⁴
and in bringing people from the provinces to see the wonders of London. During its four months of existence the exhibition was open for 140 days (closed on Sundays) and dazzled six million visitors – a fifth of the population of Great Britain. But many foreigners visited and many people returned more than once. Numbers increased as the show went on, with over 100,000 a day. It was also a milestone in the history of many new inventions, even institutions, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Thousands of leaflets were distributed telling workers to visit the YMCA. Alarmed at the temptations luring young men in London, George Williams, who was later knighted, set up clubs in an attempt to stop them being pulled into the growing underclass of London. Each club had reading rooms, refreshment areas, accommodation and places to meet and make new friends.

The year marked the third triumph for Nonconformists in twenty-three years. Results of the first religious census in England and Wales shook the complacency of the Church of England, as they showed that it had the allegiance of only about half of all practising believers. About one in two of the population had attended a chapel
⁵
on ‘Census Sunday’, 30 March 1851, with Nonconformists outnumbering Anglicans by two to one in places like Manchester. Figures showed attendances that day as Church of England 5,292,551, Roman Catholics 383,630 and the main Protestant dissenting churches (Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregationalist, Baptist) 4,536,264. As the total population was 17,927,609, the census also revealed that large numbers were staying away from church. Figures for Wales fuelled the fight for disestablishment. Here only one in five attended an Anglican church.

And so the first decade of Thomas Cook, Baptist, Temperance campaigner, printer and travel agent, ended on a high note. He could also see the results of his own efforts, but the risks he was taking were the sort that would hasten heart attacks in many men. Would he in the next ten years overreach himself and end up again in the bankruptcy courts?

D
own came fifty ramshackle lodging houses, known as ‘rookeries’, in Granby Street, Leicester. Homes crammed in narrow spaces, jammed tightly between bigger buildings, were demolished almost overnight to make two new construction sites. Enormous blocks of granite, bricks and mortar were hauled in wide carts along Granby Street ready for a Corinthian-pillared building which would look like a foreign bank in the colonies.

When the foundation stone of the Temperance Hall was laid on 2 June 1852, Thomas was out in front, looking like a gentleman. The whiteness of the gleaming stiff front to his shirt matched his stiff white shining cuffs and collar. Here he was, director of the Temperance Hall Company and ‘Corresponding Secretary of the Leicester Temperance Society’,
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greeting the local luminaries – the Leicester Temperance Hall Company had raised £2,000 from a local building society loan
²
and £10,000 from selling 844 shares. He handed a silver trowel to the president, the Revd Babington, who was ready to cement in a stone. Winks’s younger brother Fred, who met his death three years later falling off a ladder, was soon to start work on the building as one of the decorators.

Thomas was changing gear and combining piety with progress. Materialism was, just a little, tingeing his idealism. As well as organising the Temperance Hall,
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Thomas was about to build a palatial home (albeit also a hotel) next door at 63 Granby Street. Three days after the laying of the stone, an advertisement in the
Leicester Chronicle
invited tenders to build a Temperance hotel there for Mr Thomas Cook.
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The same architect, James Medland of Gloucestershire, was supervising this smaller building, which was also to be a tour office and print works. Where had the security for the loan for Thomas’s share in the Temperance Hall and the money in the Thomas Cook hotel come from? It was a huge gamble to put on such an impressive front, but his track record at the Great Exhibition had left him in no doubt about profiting from fine margins. His compromise was shown by the inclusion of a smoking room, and his new confidence was seen by the site of the hotel and Temperance Hall. Departing guests would be confronted with the noisy Nag’s Head, a busy pub on the right, or, adjoining the Temperance Hall, the equally noisy Waggon and Horses.