Era. Morton eventually accepted the lease with an option to buy at a future date. Once reconstructed and redecorated, he proposed to distance himself from the recent past and rename it as the New Prince of Wales's Theatre. On opening day, 21 August 1884, Morton introduced himself to the audience and explained his policies, namely to meet the growing demand for quality drama in south-east London. In the first week he presented Lord Lytton's Money, Sheridan's The School for Scandal and Boucicault's The Streets of London. On Boxing Day, his first pantomime was Lloyd Clarance's Aladdin. He devoted sixteen years to running the Greenwich Theatre, investing his own money, and rightly claimed that by good maintenance, and by engaging some of the best touring companies such as D'Oyly Carte, Ellen Terry and Dan Leno, he turned a derelict property into something that mattered. Press reports on Morton's management were consistently positive. He was often called 'Greenwich Morton', to distinguish him from other namesakes in the business. Of Morton's sons, 'W.F.' (William Frederick) came into the business aged twelve and was a theatre manager by sixteen. George and 'W.F.' were both managers at Greenwich; Tom acted there. Of Morton's four daughters, three eventually married theatre men. Constance, married his Scottish scenic designer, Tom Bogue, who in 1889 left the Gaiety Theatre, Glasgow to produce Morton's Christmas pantomime. The youngest, Eleanor, would marry Gibb McLaughlin, an amateur character actor from Hull who later became a successful film star. The theatre changed names several times. In 1896 he purchased the theatre outright from the Sefton Parry Trust (Parry died in 1887) and settled for Morton's Theatre. Even so, it never lost its popular names of Greenwich Theatre and Theatre Royal. In 1897 he purchased a nearby site and engaged the noted architect, W. G. R. Sprague, (who had designed the Broadway Theatre) to produce plans for a new theatre seating 3,000, but this was never followed through. In 1900, he sold the theatre to Arthur Carlton and, now in his mid sixties, turned his full attention to Hull and a new phase of his career. London and Provincial Businesses Morton had developed his theatrical business by drawing on skills developed in previous careers. As a newspaper compositor he had learned attention to detail; as a reporter he knew the value of publicity and the best and most economic way to get it. The