Free Thomas Cook by Jill Hamilton Page A

stones, or black moors where they shoot grouse. Now and then you find beautiful parks, but deserted, and broad lakes, but without boats, the roads a solitude . . .’
    Thomas tried to help the islanders in practical ways. After one trip he took up the cause of ‘the Social Condition of the people of the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland’, saying that it was ‘impossible for tourists visiting the Hebridean district to be indifferent to, or unmoved by, the symptoms of destitution and distress’. He argued that the large parties going to Staffa and Iona with him ‘frequently evinced a kind and sympathetic regard for the isolated and suffering inhabitants of that interesting island, where learning and piety, thirteen hundred years ago, concentrated their sway and diffused their influence, and where still remain relics of ecclesiastical, monarchical, and chieftain greatness’.
    Scottish history, from real life and from romantic novels, came to life for Thomas through places, scenery and such characters as Rob Roy MacGregor, Flora MacDonald, Bonnie Prince Charlie and the feuds and raids with Borderers, Lowlanders or Islemen. Novelty was found in everything, from the fauna with its Highland cattle to the exquisite flora, especially the dwarf Arctic birch, 4 which runs in and out of the heather, and the dwarf willow. 5 There were few railways in Scotland then, so, when not travelling in ferries, Thomas took tourists in coaches on the many roads that crisscrossed the country, extensions of the military routes built by the English after Culloden.
    ‘The great Highland coach road between Inverness, Dunkeld, and Perth became a favourite route long ere the first sod of a railway was turned,’ wrote Thomas. He also took tourists on the roads between Inverness and Aberdeen, the Deeside, by Balmoral, Braemar, Spital or Glenshee, Blairgowrie, Aberfeldy, and to all points of the Highland roads to Inverary, Glencoe, etc. He explained the arrangements:
    Here were commenced my first great combinations of special tickets for circular tours, but still the privileges were restricted to the large excursion parties that I took from England, for whom I got very great reductions of fares, and before the termination of the decade now under review I frequently took to Scotland as many as 5,000 visitors in a season. From every part of England visitors came to the Midland Counties to join in with my Scottish excursion, immense numbers falling in with me en route. I had generally to take two, and sometimes three special trains from Newcastle. On the opening of the Caledonian line, I began to work alternately over the east coast and west coast routes, but the popular way was by Newcastle and Berwick. Every new season my plans had to be submitted to the committees that controlled Scotch traffic, but for a number of years I had no great difficulty, so popular and successful were the excursions.

SIXTEEN
1848: Knowing Your Place in Society and
Respecting Your Betters
    T he year 1848, the year the potato crop failed in Ireland for the third time, was a year of revolutions. Crop failures throughout Europe from 1845 onwards, aggravated by industrial depression in towns, created a fertile atmosphere for revolt. Trouble erupted in Austria, Poland, Prussia, Hungary, Sicily, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Piedmont, Venetia and Greece. Britain was the only major European nation, except Russia, to escape some sort of rebellion in that dramatic year. But the government was nervous, and with renewed vigour it countered the efforts of agitators.
    Times were again really bad for many, including Thomas in Leicester: ‘1848 was a blank in my Railway Excursions,’ he wrote, ‘owing to the unwillingness of Companies to negotiate.’ He was suffering from his recent bankruptcy and the railway companies’ decision to run excursions themselves. Many now employed excursion managers so they could bypass outside agents like Thomas, whose arrangements with