The eldest son of the Rev William Wilkinson, Vicar of South Croxton, Leicestershire; was for five years a pupil of Cass, of Leeds, and then lived for two years with John Shaw, Surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, who taught at the Hunterian School of Medicine. In 1825 he went into partnership with George Jennings at Spalding, who died in 1850. Wilkinson became Surgeon to the Spalding Infirmary and Dispensary, and gained a large and successful practice by assiduous attention to duty. He died, much regretted by numbers of friends and patients, on May 13th, 1870.