Western Wood

Western Wood (4 January 1804 – 17 May 1863) was a British businessman and a Liberal Party politician. He sat in the House of Commons from 1861 to 1863.

He married Sara Leititan Morris on 16 June 1829. One of their sons Western Wood was a Member of the Queensland Legislative Council.

Family Wood was the fifth child, and third son, of Sir Matthew Wood, 1st Baronet (1768–1843) and his wife Maria née Page. His father had been a Lord Mayor of London, and was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 36 years. His brother William (1801–1881) was a barrister and Liberal MP who was ennobled as Lord Hatherley and became Lord Chancellor; his older brother John (1796–1866) was the father of Katharine O'Shea, whose divorce from her husband and remarriage to Charles Stuart Parnell became a major political scandal in 1890.

Career Wood was a merchant in the City of London, and a member of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, of which he was a warden by 1861.

When the Lord John Russell, the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for the City of London, was elevated to the peerage as Earl Russell, Wood was chosen as the Liberal candidate for the resulting by-election.

At the selection meeting in the London Tavern on 18 July, one person favoured inviting the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Ewart Gladstone, to be their candidate, but the others preferred Wood. in order to contest the by-election. The election began as a personal contest between two prominent figures in the City, but developed into a vigorous contest of political principles.

Nominations took place at a hustings in the London Guildhall on 29 July, with polling on 30 July 1861. with a majority of 506 votes out of a total of 10,988. Cubitt had a significant lead amongst the city's Liverymen, but that was not enough to offset Wood's lead amongst the householders.

Wood died in office less than two years later, on 17 May 1863 aged 59, at his home North Cray place in North Cray, Kent. He had an inflammation of both lungs, accompanied by pleurisy.