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magazine, nor his
Garden Allotment Advocate
, survives. 16 Anxious to prop up the new allotment movement, Thomas also helped found the Leicester Allotment Society and in 1842 made a vain appeal for money for members to purchase potato seeds at cost price. 17 As well as doing everything he could to help the poor grow their own food, on another occasion, to alleviate the hunger in Leicester, he bought cheap potatoes in Northamptonshire and sold them at cost price. But his supplies were not up to the samples so he could not compete successfully with the established potato merchants, and his efforts came to nothing.
    Just before Christmas 1842, Thomas gathered the information and printed the
Leicestershire Almanack, Directory Guide to Leicester and Advertiser
, priced at one shilling. Its 170 pages were packed with precise information, including the names and addresses of the Dissenting chapels and the times of services.
    His output would soon rival that of Winks, who had become a printer and distributor of Baptist publications, as well as being the unpaid minister of the Carley Street chapel. 18 Thomas said that his own works printed and distributed ‘at least half a million tracts on Temperance and kindred subjects’ plus Baptist devotional works and hymn 19 books with such words as:
    Six hundred thousand drunkards march
    To wretchedness and hell
    While loud laments and tears and groans
    In dismal chorus swell.
    The National Temperance Hymn Book and
Rechabite Songster of 1843
, published by Thomas Cook
    In addition, Thomas printed ‘the
British Building Societies Record
, edited by Mr McArthur’, and the
Temperance Gazette
for ‘Mr Kendrick of West Bromwich’. He also began a registry for servants, a registry for lodging and boarding houses and a guide to Temperance hotels in Britain. Laying aside his hammer and tools for good, he somehow found the capital for the presses, inks and stocks of paper, so he could become a full-time professional printer. His skill in layouts, typography and printing generally was exceptional.
    Lack of money made thrift and long hours of work necessities. Just as his family home doubled up as a boarding house or Temperance hotel, John Mason’s schooling did not prevent him from earning his keep. His fees of a few pence per week were paid to a preparatory school, but he was also a ‘printer’s devil’ and helped with the laborious end-of-month job of rolling, wrapping and addressing hundreds of periodicals. 20
    While juggling his Temperance activities and promoting train outings, Thomas relied on subscriptions and from printing magazines and books. The numbers of periodicals and sheets which had the stamp of ‘T. Cook, Printers, Granby Street, Leicester’ on them was growing. He was also producing the
Temperance Messengers
, the
Children’s Temperance Magazine
, the
Anti-Smoker
and
Progressive Temperance Reformer
.
    But it was not all work. In the summer of 1843, Thomas wrote about an excursion of teetotallers to the Peak of Derbyshire and parts of Yorkshire where he could ‘breathe uncontaminated air’. This took place just before the family and shop moved to 26 Granby Street in the centre of Leicester, advertised as a ‘Temperance Commercial Boarding House’ and a ‘Cheap Printing Office’. One advertisement reminded readers: ‘Commercial Gentlemen, Visitors &c are respectfully informed that Thomas Cook has opened his Establishment as a Temperance Commercial Boarding House, where Refreshments may be had at any hour of the day, and good sleeping Accommodation is provided. Thomas Cook is the general Wholesale and Retail Agent for Dawson’s Celebrated Turkey Aroma, the best substitute for Coffee ever invented. Agent for the Temperance Provident Institution.’
    Thomas’s mother, influenced by her favourite son, gave herself more options by turning her back on the country for the bustling metropolis of Derby, where she ran a Temperance hotel. Putting her two widowhoods behind her,