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she married for a third time, becoming Mrs Tivey. Her grandson, John Mason, came to stay with her, often for extensive periods.
    Gambling, like drink, was seen as evil. Baptists did not even allow raffles, let alone lotteries, to be held to raise funds. To entice children away from the annual races in 1844, Thomas arranged what he called a ‘Monster Excursion of Juveniles’ for children attending Sunday schools to travel from Leicester to Derby. John Mason wrote, ‘My public career as a Personal Conductor commenced in 1844 as a small boy with a long wand assisting the guidance of 500 other children from Leicester to Syston by special train – for five miles; then a two mile walk across fields to Mount Sorrel Hills for an afternoon’s picnic and back the same route to Leicester.’ Thomas invited Sunday school teachers to take their schools to Derby, where their counterparts would ‘open their school-rooms and provide tea for those of the same religious denominations’.
    As at least 5,000 children and teachers booked, the event had to be spread over two days. On the first day 3,000 children were conveyed in every kind of vehicle that could be mustered, including a number of new coal wagons: ‘The ordinary rolling-stock was inadequate to the occasion; and, with the wagon supplements filled to their utmost capacity, we still left behind 1,500 little enthusiasts for a second day . . . [all] were conveyed the thirty miles and back for one shilling adults, and sixpence children, all scholars coming under the latter classification.’ Other Sunday school outings followed. These coincided with restrictions imposed by the Railway Act of 1844, pushed through by Gladstone, then still a Tory and vice-president of the Board of Trade. Monopolies and the duplication of tracks were discouraged and each company had to run at least one train a day in each direction which stopped at every station – known as the ‘Parliamentary’. Most importantly, Gladstone imposed safety standards, limited fares to no more than one penny per mile, and stopped passengers travelling in open ‘tub’ carriages, like cattle. Other facilities, such as lavatories, though, were not generally introduced for forty years. 21
    One of the most significant occurrences for Thomas in that eventful year in Leicester was the visit by Silk Buckingham, who addressed a Temperance meeting. In his fiery talk, Silk Buckingham lashed out at beer-houses and contrasted the drunkenness of Christian nations with the sobriety of the Muslim countries. 22 Thomas valued him as his chief adviser for future tours to the Holy Land. These ‘Eastern Tours’ would take twenty-four years to materialise, but his path to Egypt and Palestine had begun that night in Leicester.
    Thomas enthusiastically reported Silk Buckingham’s talk in the Temperance newspapers which still flew from his presses, including the
National Temperance Magazine
. He also made time to produce a new magazine, the
Anti-Smoker
, which he described as ‘the first periodical organ of anti-tobaccoism the world ever knew’. But the tobacco leaf was becoming as much the national food as beef and beer, 23 so his magazine limped on for just three issues, finishing in mid-1843. Despite accepting defeat and putting his energies elsewhere, Thomas seems to have avoided those who smoked heavily, such as Winks. Through their involvement in the Baptist chapel, their paths must have crossed, yet there are no records of them together in Leicester. This split may have been caused by Thomas’s lonely fight against smoking while Winks was wedded to his pipe. ‘The barbarous habit’ began after Sir Walter Raleigh’s return from Virginia, USA. By the end of the eighteenth century the odour of tobacco-tinctured saliva and stale tobacco on clothes was even more familiar, 24 as smoking came to be listed among the accomplishments of a gentleman together with dancing, riding, hunting and card-playing.
    In 1845, with courage and a