Corporation of London

Robert Orlando Morgan, F.G.S.M. (1865-1956). Born in Manchester in 1865, the son of Peter and Elizabeth Morgan, Robert Orlando Morgan entered the Guildhall School of Music at the age of 15 in 1880, where he won the Merchant Taylors' scholarship, and the Webster prize. By the time he was 22, he was a teacher and examiner at the School, and in 1894, he was awarded the first prize and gold medal at the Grand Concours Internationale de Composition Musicale at Brussels. His comic opera, 'Two Merry Monarchs', was produced at the Savoy Theatre in 1910. He composed a large number of songs and piano pieces, and undertook editions of the works of other composers, particularly J.S. Bach. Having been Professor of Pianoforte and Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama 1887-1951, he retired in 1951 at the age of 86. He married the singer Annie Elizabeth Morley, who died in 1952, and they had two sons, Raymond and Cyril Douglas. Robert Orlando Morgan died in London on 16 May 1956, aged 91, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 19 May 1956.

Cyril Douglas Morgan was the second son of Robert Orlando Morgan, and was appointed to the post of junior clerk in the Chamberlain's Office of the Corporation of London on 21 April 1913. He was apprenticed to Percy Oswald Pickering, Clerk of the Chamberlain's Court 1901-1936, and became a City Freeman in November 1920. He remained in the Chamberlain's Office all his working life, being appointed Principal Clerk on 1 October 1946, from which post he retired in 1958. He became a Liveryman of the Merchant Taylors' Company on 20 May 1943. He served in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers during the First World War and was awarded the M.C., being severely wounded several times: he was a Lieutenant, acting Captain when last wounded, in 1918.