Wigglesworth worked as a plumber in Bradford into his forties. He could not read until his wife Polly taught him, and thereafter he read, by his own account, no book but the Bible. After receiving what he understood as the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1907 he began preaching, and after Polly's death in 1913 he travelled almost constantly — Britain, Europe, America, Australia, South Africa.
His meetings were marked by claims of healing, and he became one of the best-known figures of early Pentecostalism, though he founded nothing and led nothing. He was blunt to the point of roughness and entirely without polish, which was part of the appeal. His influence on twentieth-century Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity is out of all proportion to his education or his organisation.