Mr. Robert Haswell Wood, who retired from the Christchurch City Council in 1897, after serving seven years as Representative of South-west Ward, was born in 1843 in New South Wales, and was educated partly in England and subsequently at the Geelong Grammar School in Victoria. He was brought up on a farm, followed mercantile pursuits in Australia, crossed the Tasman Sea to New Zealand in 1861, and settled in Christchurch in the following year, where he has been well known in mercantile circles. For thirteen years Mr. Wood was associated with the Hon. Wm. Montgomery in the timber trade. In 1881 he established a business in Christchurch on his own account, but it was afterwards known in der the style of Wood and Laurie. Mr. Wood was for five years a member of the Christchurch Hospital Board, and during one year of that period acted as chairman.