Sussexpostcards.info

Percy Walter Morel

postcard

White Horse Hotel, Rottingdean

To home page
To directory of publishers
To gallery

Stationer and newsagent, 61 London Road, Brighton. Morel issued collotype cards of Rottingdean, Ovingdean, Bramber and Steyning, with white borders, generally red captions (more rarely brown) and his name and address printed on the back. A British printer manufactured the cards. 1910 and 1911 postmarks have been seen.

Morel also issued coloured halftone cards of Steyning, Beeding and Poynings that were printed in Saxony. A note penned by a former owner on the back of one of these cards, which shows Beeding Church, states that it was purchased at Bramber Castle. Another card, entitled "Picturesque Lane, Poynings", shows a man riding a horse past a cottage. A January 1906 postmark has been found, but the trees are in full leaf so the photograph cannot have been taken later than summer 1905. The cards have red italicised captions and backs printed in green.

Morel was born in Marylebone in London in 1872. His father was Leon Morel, a dairyman at 17 Marylebone High Street, and his mother was Mary Ann Morel, formerly Evans. Both parents were Londoners. He had an elder brother (Edward E. Morel) and two elder sisters (Adele M. Morel and Theresa A. M. Morel). His father died when he was still in his teens. The 1891 census records that he had begun work as a printer's compositor and was living with his widowed mother and Theresa at Queens Terrace in Twickenham.

In 1899 he married Alice Agnes Cutbush, who had been born at Hounslow in about 1882. The 1901 census describes him as a linotype operator and notes that he and Alice lived at 6 Milford Cottages in Twickenham. By 1905, however, Morel seems to have tired of the print industry and also it would appear of Twickenham because he moved with Alice to London Road, Brighton, to set up in business on his own account as a stationer. The 1911 census records that the couple took in lodgers to supplement their income. They do not appear to have had any children.

David Muggleton has discovered that Morel gave up his London Road business to run the Greyhound pub in East Street in Brighton in the 1920s. He died in Hove in 1948, aged 76.

To directory of publishers
To gallery

Design: Lucid Design
© www.sussexpostcards.info