William Palmer Wilton and Dorothy Agnes Dickins

Fellows Road, London NW3
cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Kate Jewell - geograph.org.uk/p/3915969

William Palmer Wilton, son of Henry Staines Wilton and Amelia Palmer, married, at 40, to Dorothy Agnes Dickins, then 25, daughter of Henry Percy Tavener Dickins (1858-1934) and Charlotte Rebecca Fase (1854-1902) in 1910, in Hampstead, London. We learn that, "Major Henry Percy Tavener Dickins VD Victoria Rifles was a wine and spirit merchant in Philpot Lane in the City, in partnership with his brother Wyndham. H[is] family was the Dickins known for the department store business Dickins & Jones." 

In 1911, the newly married couple were living at 117 Fellows Road, Hampstead, London, where William Palmer Wilton (41) Saddler & Harness maker, and Dorothy Agnes Wilton (26) employ Elizabeth Anne Crouch (35), Cook General Domestic and Ellen Friend (29), House Parlourmaid Domestic.

William and Dorothy had three daughters, all born in Hampstead: 

1. Frances Mary Wilton born 31 Aug 1911 
2. Agnes Joan Wilton born 1916 
3. Helen Margaret Wilton born 1919 

William P Wilton inherited Champion & Wilton on his father's death in 1915.

Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead
cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Derek Harper - geograph.org.uk/p/1916588

In 1939, at 18 Fitzjohn's Avenue, Belsize Park, William P and Dorothy A Wilton employed three staff: Florence M Kemcock, Domestic Cook; Leticia M Labrook, Housemaid and Eilan M Brown, Housemaid.

Amusing comment on this article about Champion & Wilton:

In the early 1950s I met William Wilton who was pretty old then and died soon after. He told me his shop was on Oxford Street and that he lived in Hampstead. From the top floor of his shop he told me that he could see his home “until that man Selfridge built in the way”.

William Palmer Wilton died in 1957, at the age of 88. He was buried, on 3 Jan 1958, at Hampstead Cemetery, with his parents, brother John and sister Margaret. On his death, Major William Palmer Wilton left the company, Champion & Wilton, to his shop manager Reginald Arkell.

Dorothy Agnes Wilton died in 1965, aged 81.

William and Dorothy's Daughters

Records show that Frances Mary Wilton (42) and Agnes Joan Wilton (37), embarked in Southampton at the end of July 1953 and arrived in Quebec on 4 Aug 1953, aboard the T.S.S. Columbia and then crossed the border into the United States. They gave the address - presumably of where they were going to be staying - as 1725 Orrington Avenue, Evanston, IL.

Frances Mary Wilton died in August 1986, aged 75 and Agnes Joan Wilton died, in 2014 at the grand old age of 98, both in London. Neither married.

Helen Margaret Wilton, married in Hampstead, in 1954 to Kenneth Graeme Todd (b. 1909). Records suggest that they had two children (born in 1957 and 1960). Kenneth Graeme Todd died, in Surrey in 1994. Helen Margaret Todd died in 2017, in Exeter, Devon. Like her sister, she will have been 98.