[1] From the early 1870s he wrote professionally, creating sensational melodramas which were performed at the Royal Grecian Theatre in Shoreditch.
In the early 1880s, Meritt and George Augustus Conquest jointly operated the Surrey Theatre, and wrote plays together.
Meritt was a member of the Savage Club and the Dramatic Authors' Society, and he was a friend of leading figures in the theatrical world.
He died on 7 July 1895 at his home in Pembroke Square in Kensington, London, survived by his wife Annie, and was buried at Brompton Cemetery.
[1] His most successful work was The New Babylon, produced in Manchester in 1878 and at Duke's Theatre in Holborn, London in 1879, where it ran for 361 performances.