Introduction
Sir Hugh Olliviere Beresford Wooding PC QC (14 January 1904 – 26 July 1974) was a lawyer and politician from Trinidad and Tobago.
Legal career
Hugh Wooding's family hailed from Barbados. He received a scholarship to study law at the Middle Temple in London, after which he returned to Trinidad and worked all over the Caribbean. He became known as "Tiger " from his tenacity in court and would represent poorer people for a minimal fee. In 1937 he was made a CBE.
In 1962 he was appointed the first Chief Justice of the newly independent Trinidad and Tobago, a post he held until 1968. He was made a Queen's Counsel (QC). He was invested with a knighthood in the 1963 New Year Honours and made a Privy Counsellor in 1966.
He chaired in 1968 a commission of inquiry into rebellions in Bermuda, concluding that the authors of the uprisings were coloured youth who felt discriminated against by (the predominantly white) police and also felt economically disadvantaged. In 1970, he sat before a committee which examined the legal situation of the Freeport region in the Bahamas.
Political career
From 1941 Hugh Wooding also engaged in politics and in 1943 was elected mayor of Port of Spain. He was also an active freemason and was involved in the promotion of the arts, but also supported, for example, the efforts of cyclists to establish an independent cycling federation.In 1971 he worked in a commission for the reform of the constitution of Trinidad and Tobago and from 1971 until his death was Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. He is also considered a pioneer and co-founder of legal education in the West Indian region and the Hugh Wooding Law School in Saint Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, is named in his honour. In 1969 he was awardedthe Trinity Cross, the then highest medal of Trinidad and Tobago.
Private life
Wooding married Anne Marie Coussey, a British-educated African from a well-to-do Gold Coast family.
He died of a heart attack.