His father George was an engine fitter at the London Docks in Wapping, who died in 1871 of tuberculosis, leaving his wife Jane with Arthur and two other children.

After working his way up to the rank of third-class clerk, he was appointed in 1886 to a job at the People's Palace in Mile End.

In 1888 he gained reading privileges at the British Museum and published a collection of 13 sketches, Cockney Corner, describing life and conditions in several London districts, including Soho, Whitechapel and Bow Street.

In 1889 he became an editor of the paper Palace Journal, reprinting some of his Cockney Corner sketches there and commenting on books and other matters, including life for London's poor.

Unlike Martin Hewitt, Dorrington, as one critic put it, was a "low-key, realistic, lower-class answer to Sherlock Holmes".

He was noted as "a respected but deeply corrupt private detective," "a cheerfully unrepentant sociopath who is willing to stoop to theft, blackmail, fraud or cold-blooded murder to make a dishonest penny.

In 1899 Morrison published To London Town as the final instalment of a trilogy including Tales of Mean Streets and A Child of the Jago.

He continued to issue a wide variety of work through the 1900s, including short story collections, one-act plays and articles on Japanese art.

The same year Morrison sold his collection of Japanese paintings to Sir William Gwynne-Evans for £4,000, who donated it to the British Museum.

On 7 January 1914, in King's Hall, Covent Garden, he was a member of the jury in the mock trial of John Jasper for the murder of Edwin Drood.

At this all-star event, arranged by The Dickens Fellowship, G. K. Chesterton was Judge and George Bernard Shaw appeared as foreman of the jury.

In 1915 Morrison became a special constable in Essex and was credited with reporting news of the first Zeppelin raid on London.

On 28 April 2019, actor Robert Crighton gave a reading of two of Morrison's detective stories at Loughton Baptist Church, a stone's throw from where Salcombe Lodge once stood.