A cradle radical of Lancashire freeholder stock, Wood was baptized on 19 Nov. 1789 at Mosley Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester, where his father Ottiwell Wood (1759-1847), a prosperous manufacturer and lifelong advocate of liberal ideas, had a house in Oldham Street.
Intended for the Unitarian ministry, which his brother Samuel (1797-1849) entered in 1819, Wood left Glasgow University in 1808 without taking his degree and went into business at the Liverpool counting house of William and Edgar Corrie, preparatory to trading as a sugar refiner in partnership with his fellow Dissenter William Thornhill.
Recalling the 1826 Parliament, in 1832 Edward Davies Davenport named Wood as one of the three ‘most willing’ members of the opposition ‘virtually’ led by Hume.
He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., and presented petitions he had solicited from congregations in Lancashire and elsewhere for repeal of the Test Acts, 23, 25, 30, 31 May, 6, 7, 8, 12 June 1827. On 7 June he described and stressed the practical difficulties faced by the Nonconformist merchants of ‘immense wealth ... shut out from all influence in the corporation of Liverpool’.
Opposing the duke of Wellington’s administration, he rallied to Hume on the estimates and tried in vain to expose and exploit the political differences between the home secretary Peel and the beleaguered colonial secretary Huskisson, 11, 12 Feb. 1828. He urged repeal of the Test Acts on presenting favourable petitions, 15, 20, 25 Feb., 5 Mar., and voted thus, 26 Feb. On 20 Feb., as a self-professed spokesman for the Dissenters, he made a personal plea for the repeal bill’s prompt enactment and also Catholic emancipation. He warned that the Dissenters’ 35-year silence was over and that defeat in the Lords (which he anticipated) would inevitably unleash a ‘grand and powerful union’ countrywide for religious toleration. He commended the Irish Catholics for petitioning for Test Acts repeal, when the Unitarians reciprocated, 24 Apr., 6 May, and divided for Catholic relief, 12 May. Wood questioned East Retford witnesses, 3, 4 Mar., and voted to find one of them guilty of perjury, 7 Mar. He voted against the disqualification bill, 24 June, and objected (as committee chairman) to changes proposed by Peel to the revived disfranchisement bill, before dividing against it, 27 June. He voted to lower the corn pivot price, 22 Apr., and for the gradual introduction of a fixed 10s. duty, 29 Apr. 1828, 19 May 1829. He divided for inquiry into chancery administration, 24 Apr., and took charge of the bankrupt laws amendment bill, 16, 23 May 1828. On the 28th he attended the Westminster reform dinner.
Addressing Lancashire concerns, and after prior consultation with the Smith Stanleys, on 12 Feb. 1828 Wood postponed the Preston poll bill, which the corporation now opposed, and sought to realize its principal objectives through the borough polls bill, on which committee he sat. He was a spokesman for it, 28 Apr.
Wood welcomed the concession of Catholic emancipation in 1829 despite the ‘bitter pill’ of the attendant Irish disfranchisements. Before going the circuit he presented and endorsed favourable petitions from Lancashire’s Dissenters, 6, 11, 16, 23, 27 Feb., 2, 3, 4 Mar., ridiculed Preston’s anti-Catholic petition as the Ultra Isaac Gascoyne’s bantling, 4 Mar., and divided for emancipation, 6 Mar.
Wood was not in the Commons, 4 Feb. 1830, and maintained next day that had he been, he would have ‘felt at a loss’ how to vote on Knatchbull’s amendment regretting the omission of distress from the address, for although he shared the Ultras’ disappointment and hoped retrenchment and concessions on corn would alleviate the weavers’ plight, he could not align with them in opposition. Later that month, signalling a hardening of opinion, he refused to endorse distress petitions from Salford, 17 Feb., and Preston, 26 Feb., stating that he now saw no point in cutting taxes while Parliament remained unreformed. He spoke similarly of the need to put reform first when presenting a petition against the East India Company’s trading monopoly, 4 June. He voted for Blandford’s scheme, 18 Feb., to enfranchise Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and for Russell’s moderate and O’Connell’s radical reform proposals, 28 May. He had endorsed resolutions similar to O’Connell’s on the 12th as the presenter of a Preston petition. He continued to support Hume and also divided fairly steadily with the revived Whig opposition on most issues, including Jewish emancipation, 17 May, on which he brought up favourable petitions, 20 May, 4 June, and abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 24 May (paired), 7 June. He voted in O’Connell’s small minorities on the Doneraile conspiracy, 12 May, for universal suffrage, 28 May, and for reform of the Irish Vestry Acts, 10 June 1830 (and again, 23 Jan. 1832).
With George IV’s death and a dissolution in prospect, he paid greater attention to local legislation (30 Apr., 12, 20 May, 4 June 1830). He had a petition criticizing Lancashire’s ‘close’ grand jury printed, despite the Smith Stanleys’ objections, 24 May, and opposed the administration of justice bill with Hume and O’Connell to the last, having on 4 June presented and supported hostile petitions from Cheshire, whose separate jurisdiction it abolished. He pressed in vain for inquiry into the management of the London parish of St. Luke’s by the church commissioners, 8, 17 June. He had yet to act on a promise (made in debate, 19 May 1829) to amend the Sugar Acts on behalf of the refiners, when Huskisson proposed a further reduction in the duty on West Indian sugars, 14 June. Opposing this, he criticized ministers, pleaded for deregulation and warned that ‘this silly idea of protecting the West Indian interest’ had resulted in a shortfall in raw sugar, harming the refiners and driving business abroad. Glancing at Huskisson, he added: ‘it is of no use to enter into commercial treaties with foreign powers with respect to refined sugar, for it is not a market our refiners want’. He rightly surmised that a three-cornered contest at Preston at the general election, when the radical Henry Hunt* made Smith Stanley’s seat his target, would not jeopardize his return, and he secured it at a cost of only £450; but his failure to spend deprived him of his early lead in the poll and dented his popularity. He paid tribute to Smith Stanley in his closing speech and argued against intervention on the continent to assist the deposed French king.
The Wellington ministry naturally listed Wood among their ‘foes’. Opposing them on the address, 3, 5 Nov. 1830, he reserved particular criticism for the facility with which it sanctioned intervention in the Netherlands, Poland and Portugal, and the absence of any pledge on reform or measures to assist the labourers and the agricultural poor. He divided against them on the civil list, 12 Nov., and again on the 15th, when they were brought down. Addressing the House for the first time after Lord Grey succeeded Wellington as premier, 22 Nov., he promised to scrutinize the new ministry closely, expressed admiration for the Tories Sir Robert Peel and Lowther and explained that he would continue to sit with opposition as a ‘private individual’, yet would back the government on reform and taxation and support them in the event of an early dissolution. As ‘one of the no-party’, he criticized the ‘spoiling’ tactics resorted to by Peel in opposition, 7 Dec. 1830, 15 Feb. 1831, over the chancellor Lord Althorp’s game bill. He was appointed to the select committee on the East India Company’s charter, 4 Feb., and was an effective lobbyist against the calico duties, 28 Feb., 8 Mar. 1831. Making reform, including the ballot, his priority, he presented and endorsed favourable petitions from the manufacturing towns, 7 Dec. 1830, 21, 26, 28 Feb. 1831. Countering allegations by the anti-reformers and his colleague Hunt, who had defeated Smith Stanley at the December 1830 by-election, he described Lancashire as ‘overwhelmingly’ pro-reform, criticized Liverpool’s ‘narrow franchise’ and urged ministers to concede separate representation to Salford and to extend Wigan’s franchise, 26 Feb. Two days later he spoke similarly of York, ‘a great town in which there is merely a pretence of representation’, and, anticipating that the ministerial bill would disappoint the radicals, he projected it as an ‘essential benefit’ and ‘important step’ towards reform which ‘neither I nor those with whom I act will oppose’. Claiming support for it from ‘all Northern England and the manufacturing towns’, he defended it at length, 7 Mar., disputed counter claims made by Gascoyne as the presenter of Liverpool’s ‘moderate reform’ petition, 14 Mar., and brought up favourable ones, 16, 19 Mar. He voted for the bill at its second reading, 22 Mar., and against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. Presenting heavily signed favourable petitions from Manchester and Preston in Hunt’s absence, 20 Apr., he drew on them to dispute Hunt’s claim that Lancashire had tired of reform. Most of the mass of anti-slavery petitions he presented during that Parliament (4, 10, 12, 17, 25 Nov., 6 Dec. 1830, 14 Apr. 1831) were from Lancashire’s Dissenters, whose petitions against church rates, 25 Nov. 1830, and for tithe reform, 19 Mar. 1831, he also endorsed. On the locally divisive issue of the factory bill, he was named to the select committee, 14 Mar., and presented petitions from both sides, 19 Mar., 18 Apr., but declined to speak. At the 1831 general election he canvassed for reformers at Liverpool and in the county and only narrowly avoided a contest at Preston, which returned him with Hunt after intrigues against him failed. On the hustings, where he defended the reform bill, while reaffirming his support for shorter parliaments, a wider franchise and the ballot, he was (wrongly) accused of poor attendance and criticized for neglecting corn law reform and failing to defer to Hunt’s political leadership on ‘matters affecting the working classes’.
William Ewart* recalled that on 5 July 1831, on the ‘important issue’ of the Liverpool writ and the anti-reformer John Benett’s attempt to disfranchise the borough for corruption
Rigby Wason came into the House with all the pomp and circumstance of a judge about to record the final sentence of disfranchisement against the freemen. He was armed with a large black book in mourning for the carpenters and other victims of his legislative justice. Great was his wrath when John Wood so promptly put an end to the proceedings.
Manchester New Coll. Oxf. William Shepherd mss vii, f. 53.
He divided for the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July, and gave it steady support in committee. Commenting, 14 July, 8 Aug., on several petitions entrusted to him advocating amendments, he stated, to taunts from Hunt, that although he was sympathetic towards their demands, supporting the ministerial bill remained his priority. He defended the decision to retain the 1821 census as the standard for English borough disfranchisements, 14 July, and the provision made for Yorkshire, 10 Aug. When on 4 Aug. a second seat for Stoke-on-Trent was proposed, he stated his preference for single Member constituencies and conceding a Member to Ashton-under-Lyne (which was afterwards awarded). He voted for the bill’s third reading, 19 Sept., and was a majority teller for its passage, 21 Sept. He voted for the second reading of the Scottish reform bill, 23 Sept., and Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct. He divided for the revised reform bill at its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831, and consistently for its details, intervening only to ascertain how the registration clause would operate in Preston, 20 Feb. 1832. He paired for the bill’s third reading, 22 Mar., and voted for the address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry it unimpaired, 10 May. Next day, as directed by the meeting, he presented and endorsed a Manchester petition requesting that supplies be withheld pending its passage, which had had been rushed to him by Richard Potter, Fielden and Shuttleworth.
Wood’s pragmatism extended beyond reform, although he generally remained true to his original beliefs. He took pride in his select committee work on private and public bills, and his competence as a lawyer and businessman was recognized in appointments to the select committees on the East India Company, 28 June 1831, 27 Jan. 1832, and the West Indies, 6 Oct., 15 Dec. 1831. The demands they placed on him prevented him going the circuit.
With no prospect of a fourth return for Preston, Wood announced his retirement directly the reform bill became law. At the 1832 general election he campaigned for the Liberals Charles Poulett Thomson* and Sir George Philips* in Manchester and George William Wood in Lancashire South, and reported regularly to ministers on their candidates’ prospects in Northern England.