Born 16 September 1870 at Wandsworth Common, London, the eleventh child and eighth and youngest son of Joseph Wilson, MICE, and Harriet Ann Moore, his wife. He was educated at Dulwich College and at the Whitgift School, Croydon. He then entered the Medical School at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he served as ophthalmic house surgeon in 1873 under Henry Power and Bowater J Vernon. For reasons of health he then migrated to South Africa, where he died on 5 June 1940, having practised at Rondebosch, CP. He married Margaret L White on 24 June 1897. She survived him with one daughter.