 He was a proponent of spiritualism, and an opponent of capital punishment.Hannen Swaffer was born in Lindfield, Sussex, the eldest of eight children of a Folkestone draper, Henry Joseph Swaffer, and his wife, Kate Eugenie Hannen.He was educated first at St George's Church of England School in Ramsgate  and then at Stroud Green Grammar School, Kent, and joined a local newspaper in Folkestone as an apprentice reporter.