[1] Riley's work, alongside rivals Alfred South and Sutherland MacDonald, was part of establishing an English style of tattooing.
[3] Riley took drawing classes at a mechanics' institute in Leeds and opened a tattoo shop in Liverpool near the docks.
Riley's style was fine-lined and influenced by Japanese tattoo designs.
[2] Some sources credit Riley with patenting the first single-coil tattoo machine in 1891, soon after Samuel O'Reilly received an American patent for the first electric tattoo machine.
[6] Burchett may have been misremembering Sutherland MacDonald's work, who received the first British tattoo machine patent in December 1894.