He was considered by his aunt to be spoilt and he rebelled against the harsh treatment. There he later boarded at the Belvedere school in Upper Norwood and at the end of his education he improved his Latin in Cornwall. He then followed in the footsteps of his father, studying law at Lincoln's Inn. He also attended St Bartholomew's Hospital alongside medical students to watch operations. Wragge travelled on the continent of Europe extensively with his Uncle William of Cheltenham. His second cousin was Clement Mansfield Ingleby, a partner in the family law firm Ingleby, Wragge, and Ingleby (which later became known as Wragge & Co of Birmingham), and later a literary scholar. At the age of 21 Wragge came into the inheritance left to him by his parents and a legacy and family silver left to him by his aunt on his mother's side of the family. He decided to take eight months break from Lincoln's Inn to visit the Egypt and the Levant. In October 1874 Wragge together with a friend Gaze Hoclen departed London on a Thomas Cook tour travelling to Paris by rail and on to Marseilles, where he sailed to Egypt on the 'Neiman'. He travelled up the Nile and took part in an archeological dig. He then toured Palestine, Jerusalem and the Holy sites, where he met a group of Mormons who interested him. He promised to visit their new city being built at Salt Lake in the American West. After much deliberation, he decided not to return to the United Kingdom with his friend and booked a passage through Cooks on the 'John Tennant' via India to Australia, then sailed from Newcastle, Sydney in late August 1875 across the Pacific to San Francisco. Once in San Francisco he travelled by rail across the wild west to Toronto via Salt Lake City. Whilst in Salt Lake City he met briefly with Brigham Young as was his right as a visitor. Later, he wrote a number of articles about Mormons and their religion. In Toronto he met with his cousin Edmund Wragge who became a famous railway engineer in Canada, South Africa and Great Britain. He returned home to Oakamoor to face his Uncle George (of Ingleby, Wragge and Ingleby solicitors) who now had Oakamoor Lodge as a country retreat from his practice in Birmingham and was very displeased with his behaviour. He made the far reaching decision that the law was not for him, and he surrendered his articles and was trained as a midshipman at Janet Taylor's Nautical Academy in London.