He was a member of the Hunter River floods commission 1869–70, the Sydney, City and Suburban Sewage and Health Board 1875–77, and the Board for Opening Tenders for Public Works 1875–87; he was a New South Wales commissioner for the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880. Granted a year's leave on 29 May 1889, Whitton retired on 31 May 1890 with a pension of £675 and visited England in 1892. He had supervised the laying of of the track on which no accident had occurred attributable to defective design or construction. Parkes regarded him as 'a man of such rigid and unswerving integrity, a man of such vast grasp, that however, his faults may occasionally project themselves into prominence, it would be difficult to replace him by a man of equal qualifications'.