 After further experience in provincial journalism, he joined the "Daily Mail" in 1902, and worked for its proprietor Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) for the next seventeen years.Swaffer married Helen Hannah, daughter of John Sitton, a Clapham grocer, in 1904; they had no children.They remained married until her death in 1956, although he left her at intervals for various mistresses.