Prize medal photography in bronze.

Lincoln art and industrial exhibition .

To V. E. Morris

1914

Good condition.

Victor Emmanuel Morris was born at East Grinstead in 1877, the son of Fanny and James Morris, a grocer and draper who ran a general store and post office in Lingfield Road, East Grinstead. James Morris (1838-1906) was born in Nutley, Sussex, but after his marriage he established a newsagents and general store at 65 Lingfield Road, East Grinstead. The sub post office was added to his business in 1887. James Morris, who possessed high moral values, but held puritanical views regarding social behaviour, was elected as a Liberal Party councillor in East Grinstead's Urban District Council elections in 1903 and served on the Council until his death in 1906.

After his father's death, Victor Emmanuel Morris worked at the Lingfield Road Post Office Stores with his two elder sisters - Joanna Morris (born 1868, East Grinstead), the sub-postmistress, and Mary Morris (born 1870, East Grinstead). 

Victor Morris shared his father's Liberal politics and Non-conformist beliefs. Victor Morris was also a Pacifist and as early as 1904, he was giving illustrated lectures on topics such as "Passive Resistance: Past and Present". When the First World War broke out in 1914, Morris became a Conscientious Objector. Facing a Tribunal on 28th October 1916, Victor Morris declared : " I believe that God alone has the right to take life and that under no circumstances whatever has a man the right to kill another person. I believe that war is immoral." 

Victor Morris was also a keen photographer, using a dark room attached to the back of the store to develop his photographs. There is evidence that Morris was taking photographs in East Grinstead as early as 1896. (East Grinstead Museum holds a photograph by V. E. Morris entitled "East Grinstead Fair, High Street ", dated 1896). Morris produced picture postcards of local views and events in East Grinstead. Morris also produced excellent photographic lantern slides. At the Edinburgh Photographic Society Exhibition of 1922, V. E. Morris was commended for three of his lantern slides - "Morning Mist in Lakeland" (Medal), "In Winter Time" (Honourable Mention) and "Bishop Redman's Tomb, Ely Cathedral" (Honourable Mention). Morris was also awarded First Prize for his lantern slides at a photographic exhibition held in Lewes in April 1923.