Her father, William Powell Frith was a successful painter and Panton reports that he showed very little interest in his children.

Panton appeared as a model in the 1859 painting trilogy Past and Present by Augustus Egg which incidentally deals with a spouse being unfaithful.

During that period she lived in the Dorset market town of Wareham, which featured in her memoir of 1909, Fresh Leaves And Green Pastures,[3] the domestic print run of which was destroyed in settlement of a libel action brought by local squire Guy Marston, who contested the claim that he had wantonly destroyed records of the Rempstone estate upon his inheritance.

During this time they awaited payment for the sale of their share in the brewery, and Panton decided to write to raise money, pitching the idea of articles on home furnishing to the Ladies Pictorial magazine.

A Story of Country Life, which deals with rural politics in a fictional Southern English county,[5] and The Cannibal Crusader: an Allegory for the Times (1908), in which a noble savage exposes the folly of modern society.