Morton, THOMAS

Morton, THOMAS, dramatist, was born in 1764 in the county of Durham, but, left an orphan, was brought up by an uncle in London. He entered Lincoln's Inn, but soon quitted law for play-writing, and produced Speed the Plough (1798, with its invisible 'Mrs Grundy'), The Blind Girl (1801), Town and Country (1807), School for Grown Children (1826), &c. For thirty-five years he lived at Pangbourne, near Reading, till in 1828 he removed to London, where he died, 28th March 1838.—His son, JOHN MADISON MORTON, the author of Box and Cox, was born at Pangbourne, 3d January 1811, and was educated in Paris and Germany (1817-20), and then at Clapham under Dr Richardson (1820-27). From 1832 to 1840 he held a clerkship in Chelsea Hospital, and between 1835 and 1885 wrote close on a hundred farces, of which Box and Cox (1847) alone is said to have brought him £7000. But the rise of burlesque was his ruin, and in 1881 he became a 'poor brother' of the Charter-house. He died December 19, 1891. See memoir by Clement Scott prefixed to Plays for Home Performance (1889).