Deighton Brothers Ltd of Clapton, London, was established by textile designer William James Deighton in the mid-1800s. By 1870 he was the first commercial manufacture of embroidery transfers in England. His father, also William Deighton, was a surgeon and apothecary and had developed a heat-activated printing ink. The younger William Deighton modified the 'prick and pounce' method employed by tailors so that one could transfer inked patterns quickly and easily at home by using a domestic iron.

The early transfer designs were made in the following way: an idea was sketched in pencil before being worked up into a pattern. Using a specially invented perforating machine, the pattern was pricked through to three or four sheets of paper, which then acted as stencils. One of the stencils was taken a laid on tissue-weight paper. The special ink was forced through the stencil holes onto the tissue and allowed to dry. In most pre-1950s transfers, therefore, the apparently continuous lines are, in fact, comprised of a series of dots. After that date, developments allowed the use of a printing press to produce the patterns.

Deighton was involved in a legal dispute with rival Manchester-based designer William Briggs over who had invented the perforation technique for transfers. Briggs applied for a patent in 1874, but evidence shows Deighton was selling his transfers from 1870; at that time Briggs was using block printing rather than the perforating machine.