[5] Not long after this he met a local girl, Mary Buxton, and they were married at St Anne's Church in Newton Heath, Manchester on 26 December 1898.

[10] Pierrepoint later persuaded his elder brother Thomas to join the family business, and reputedly trained him in a stable with a rope and sacks of corn.

His career was finished when he arrived the day before an execution at Chelmsford Prison "considerably the worse for drink", and fought his assistant John Ellis.

Ellis reported the incident to the Home Office which decided, after receiving confirmation by the warders' account of the matter, to strike Henry from the list of approved executioners.

[citation needed] Throughout his career as an executioner, Pierrepoint occupied various other jobs, such as a position in Huddersfield gasworks,[11] to supplement the relatively low pay English hangmen received.