See Thomas Balch (Ed.), The Examination of Joseph Galloway by a Committee of the House of Commons (Philadelphia, 1855); Ernest H. Baldwin, Joseph Galloway, the Loyalist Politician (New Haven, 1903); and M.C. Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution (2 vols., New York, 1897).
GALLOWAY, THOMAS (1796-1851), Scottish mathematician, was born at Symington, Lanarkshire, on the 26th of February 1796. In 1812 he entered the university of Edinburgh, where he distinguished himself specially in mathematics. In 1823 he was appointed one of the teachers of mathematics at the military college of Sandhurst, and in 1833 he was appointed actuary to the Amicable Life Assurance Office, the oldest institution of that kind in London; in which situation he remained till his death on the 1st of November 1851. Galloway was a voluminous, though, for the most part, an anonymous writer. His most interesting paper is “On the Proper Motion of the Solar System,” and was published in the Phil. Trans., 1847. He contributed largely to the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and also wrote several scientific papers for the Edinburgh Review and various scientific journals. His Encyclopaedia article, “Probability,” was published separately.
See Transactions of the Royal Astronomical Society (1852).
GALLOWAY, a district in the south-west of Scotland, comprising the counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigtown. It was the Novantia of the Romans, and till the end of the 12th century included Carrick, now the southern division of Ayrshire. Though the designation has not been adopted civilly, its use historically and locally has been long established. Thus the Bruces were lords of Galloway, and the title of earl of Galloway (created 1623) is now held by a branch of the Stewarts. Galloway also gives its name to a famous indigenous breed of black hornless cattle. See [Kirkcudbrightshire] and [Wigtownshire].
GALLOWS[1] (a common Teutonic word—cf. Goth. galga, O. H. Ger. galgo, Mod. Ger. Galgen, A.S. galzan, &c.—of uncertain origin), the apparatus for executing the sentence of death by hanging. It usually consists of two upright posts and a cross-beam, but sometimes of a single upright with a beam projecting from the top. The Roman gallows was the cross, and in the older translations of the Bible “gallows” was used for the cross on which Christ suffered (so galga in Ulfilas’s Gothic Testament).[2] Another form of gallows in the middle ages was that of which the famous example at Montfaucon near Paris was the type. This was a square structure formed of columns of masonry connected in each tier with cross-pieces of wood, and with pits beneath, into which the bodies fell after disarticulation by exposure to the weather.
According to actual usage the condemned man stands on a platform or drop (introduced in England in 1760), the rope hangs from the cross-beam, and the noose at its end is placed round his neck. He is hanged by the falling of the drop, the knot in the noose being so adjusted that the spinal cord is broken by the fall and death instantaneous. In old times the process was far less merciful; sometimes the condemned man stood in a cart, which was drawn away from under him; sometimes he had to mount a ladder, from which he was thrust by the hangman. Until 1832 malefactors in England were sometimes hanged by being drawn up from the platform by a heavy weight at the other end of the rope. Death in these cases was by strangulation. At the present time executions in the United Kingdom are private, the gallows being erected in a chamber or enclosed space set apart for the purpose inside the gaol.
The word “gibbet,” the Fr. gibet, gallows, which appears in the first instance to have meant a crooked stick,[3] was originally used in English synonymously with gallows, as it sometimes still is. Its later and more special application, however, was to the upright posts with a projecting arm on which the bodies of criminals were suspended after their execution. These gibbets were erected in conspicuous spots, on the tops of hills (Gallows Hill is still a common name) or near frequented roads. The bodies, smeared with pitch to prevent too rapid decomposition, hung in chains as a warning to evildoers. From the gruesome custom comes the common use of the word “to gibbet” for any holding up to public infamy or contempt.