[1] The son of John Wood senior (died 1832), a manufacturer in Bradford's Ivegate, he was apprenticed at age 15 to Richard Smith, a local worsted spinner.
Naturally shy, he canvassed and attended rallies as well as financing Michael Thomas Sadler, a radical Tory Member of Parliament who backed a Ten Hours Bill.
[1] At a personal level, Wood set standards at his own mill, where the working day was of 11 hours, though he was unable to stop the corporal punishment there of child workers.
[1] The prevailing hours in the Bradford worsted industry were 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., with a 30-minute break for lunch: Wood was credited with being the first employer to allow time for breakfast.
[3] In 1831 Wood recruited to the cause George Stringer Bull, a curate at Bierley Chapel (in what is now the City of Bradford) who went on to lobby Lord Ashley, a key figure in factory act legislation put to the House of Commons.
With the purchase of property near Alton, Hampshire he retained philanthropic interests, but exchanged activism for the life of a gentleman, settling at Thedden Grange.
[1] Wood married for the first time around 1815, and lived with his wife, who died in 1826, at Southbrook Lodge, his father's house in Little Horton, now part of the Bradford metropolitan area.