 Morris was born at Elm House in Walthamstow , Essex , on 24 March 1834 . Raised into a wealthy middle @-@ class family , he was named after his father , a financier who worked as a partner in the Sanderson & Co. firm , bill brokers in the City of London . His mother was Emma Morris ( née Shelton ) , who descended from a wealthy bourgeois family from Worcester . Morris was the third of his parents ' surviving children ; their first child , Charles , had been born in 1827 but died four days later . Charles had been followed by the birth of two girls , Emma in 1829 and Henrietta in 1833 , before William 's birth . These children were followed by the birth of siblings Stanley in 1837 , Rendall in 1839 , Arthur in 1840 , Isabella in 1842 , Edgar in 1844 , and Alice in 1846 . The Morris family were followers of the evangelical Protestant form of Christianity , and William was baptised four months after his birth at St. Mary 's Church , Walthamstow . 
