Born on 25 July 1905, he was educated at King's College, Auckland, and Otago Medical School, Dunedin, and qualified in 1929. While at Knox College, Dunedin, he was a leading cricket player and won his "blue" for hockey, and won medals in the medical school. He held resident posts at Auckland Hospital for two years and then came to England, where he worked at the Seamen's Hospital, Greenwich, the West London Hospital, and the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford. He spent a year under A S Blundell Bankart at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, and also worked in Lorenz Bohler's fracture clinic in Vienna. He went back to New Zealand in 1936, was appointed Assistant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Auckland Hospital, and was soon promoted. During the war he served at the Auckland Military Hospital. He was a member of the Auckland Hospital Board and University Council. He gave much time to the Crippled Children's Society, and examined for the Royal Australian College of Surgeons of which he was a Fellow. He was a foundation Fellow of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association (1950) and its first editorial secretary; he addressed its annual meetings on spinal fusion (1950) and on the management of the tubercular spine (1953). He visited orthopaedic centres in America in 1951. Morris had a prosperous private practice at 28 Prince's Street, Auckland. He died there on 20 June 1956, aged 50, survived by his wife Kathleen nee Horsley, four sons, and a daughter. He was interested in education and in hospital management and wrote on the reform of these subjects. His amusements were cricket, hockey, swimming, and sailing, and he enjoyed bridge and the theatre.