Henry William Crosskey was born on December 7, 1826, in Lewes, Sussex, England.

He was an English Unitarian minister, social reformer, and geologist. After being trained for the ministry at Manchester New College (1843–1848), he became pastor of Friar-Gate Chapel in Derby until 1852. He founded the Derby Working Men's Institute and helped establish the National Public School Association. In 1852, he accepted a position at a Unitarian congregation in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1869, he moved to Birmingham, England, where he remained as pastor of the Church of the Messiah until his death. While in Glasgow he became interested in geology and from 1855 onwards he devoted his leisure to the pursuit of this science. He headed the city’s Geological Society. He became an authority on glacial geology and wrote many articles on the Quaternary fossiliferous beds of Scotland (Trans. Geol. Soc. Glasgow). He also prepared a valuable series of Reports on the Erratic Blocks of England, Wales and Ireland for the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1873–1892). In conjunction with David Robertson and George Stewardson Brady (1832–1921), he wrote the “Monograph of the Post Tertiary Entomostraca of Scotland, etc.” for the Palaeontographical Society (1874); and he edited Henry Carvill Lewis's “Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland”, issued posthumously (1894). Glasgow University conferred the degree of LL.D. on him in 1882.

In 1852, he married Hannah Aspden (abt 1825- ). He died on October 1, 1893, in Birmingham, England.