Cook, Thomas (redirected from Thomas Cook)

Cook, Thomas, 1808–92, English travel agent. In Leicester in 1841 he founded the travel agency that bears his name. The idea of the guided tour met with quick success, and by 1852 Cook had moved his office to London. Shortly thereafter he set up (1856) his Circular Tour of Europe, and 10 years later he was arranging tours of the United States. His most spectacular achievement was the transportation of an entire expeditionary force (18,000 men) up the Nile for the attempted relief of Gen. Charles George Gordon in 1884.

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Cook, Thomas

(born Nov. 22, 1808, Melbourne, Derbyshire, Eng.—died July 18, 1892, Leicester, Leicestershire) British innovator of the conducted tour. A Baptist missionary, in 1841 he arranged for a special train to be run to a temperance meeting; this was probably the first publicly advertised excursion train in England. He began to arrange excursions on a regular basis, and in 1856 he led his first grand tour of Europe. In the early 1860s he became an agent for the sale of travel tickets; with his son, John Mason Cook (1834–99), he founded the Thomas Cook & Son travel agency. In the 1880s the firm also organized military transport and postal services.