In Morton's last decades, the popularity of Victorian burlesque greatly diminished the market for farces. He fell on hard times and in 1881 became a Charterhouse pensioner. His last new play to be produced in his lifetime, at Toole's Theatre in 1885, was a three-act farcical comedy called "Going It", which kept the house in a continual roar of laughter. It was said of Morton that "The unlucky thing about him was that though he could write as well at 80 as at 30, he was left stranded high and dry by the receding wave of fashion." He died at the Charterhouse on 19 December 1891 and was buried on the 23rd at Kensal Green Cemetery.