 He became Assistant Secretary to the Government of Bengal and then, in 1879, was appointed as Under Secretary in the Home Department of the Government of India.In 1880 he returned to work at district level, at Govindpur, having married Elsie Julie Oppermann on 17 June 1879 at Simla.According to Crispin Bates, a historian of modern South Asia, Oppermann was an "erudite German" and her linguistic proficiency helped Risley learn more about anthropology and statistics from non-English sources.