W & J Galloway and Sons was a British manufacturer of steam engines and boilers based in Manchester, England. The firm was established in 1835 as a partnership of two brothers, William and John Galloway. The partnership expanded to encompass their sons and in 1889 it was restructured as a limited liability company. It ceased trading in 1932.
The Galloway brothers had been apprenticed to another partnership involving their father, a maker of waterwheels and gearing for mills, before setting up in business on their own account. Their firm grew to be a specialist producer of steam engines and industrial boilers with a worldwide customer base and a reputation for ingenuity. Their products were used in such diverse areas as electricity generation and refrigeration. The business grew with the increasing application of steam power in industry, and it died with industry's move to the application of electric power.
History Galloway, Bowman and Glasgow William Galloway was born on 5 March 1768 at Coldstream in the Scottish Borders, became a millwright and moved to Manchester in 1790.ODNB He was one of many Scots who moved to England seeking to gain from the rapid expansion of industry there; others included William Murdoch and James Watt, who settled in Birmingham, and fellow settlers in the Manchester area, John Kennedy, James McConnel and the cotton-spinning brothers, Adam and George Murray.Chaloner p. 99.
He set up business at his home address, 37 Lombard Street.Chaloner p. 100. In 1806 he formed a business partnership with a friend and fellow ex-resident of Coldstream, James Bowman: Galloway wrote to him offering a joint business venture in return for a £200 injection of capital. Bowman moved from London, where he had gone to seek his fortune, and took up residence at Trumpet Street, Manchester. It would appear that the partnership with Bowman coincided with a move to premises at the Caledonia Foundry at 44, Great Bridgewater Street, on the corner of Albion Street in the Gaythorn district. At this time the business traded as millwrights but by 1813 "engineers" had been added to the description, and by 1817 there was the addition of "ironfounders". The term "engineer" in relation to mechanical work was a relatively new one.
Around 1820, William Glasgow, a foundryman from the Tweed who had been working in Bolton for Rothwell and Hick, joined Galloway and Bowman as a junior partner. His role was to supervise the new ironfounding section of the business. The works were extended by the purchase of additional land. The partnership manufactured water wheels, their associated gearing, and other machinery associated with all forms of milling. As early as 1820 the men had completed some projects for customers in France (at Lille) and the United States (Charleston, South Carolina).
His son, John, wrote later that
At some time before 1828 Galloway and Bowman formed a partnership as machine makers. This was separate and in addition to their partnership with Glasgow, which continued to trade as millwrights, founders and engineers. It has been speculated that Bowman married a sister of Galloway.Chaloner p. 118.
The firm of Galloway, Bowman and Glasgow became the repair facility for the fledgling Liverpool and Manchester Railway which had no workshops of its own.Rendell p. 3. In 1830–31 the partnership constructed its first steam locomotive, the Manchester and by the following year had produced the Caledonian. They had wooden wheels on to which were shrunk welded metal tyres. The wheels were built by John Ashbury, who was later to become a notable engineer in his own right and the owner of the eponymous railway wagon works at Openshaw.Chaloner p. 107.
Neither locomotive was initially a success, although the design problems were resolved. In the case of Caledonian the vertical cylinders were placed between the frames in front of the smokebox and drove vertically mounted connecting rods attached to the leading wheels, which were also in front of the smokebox. It had a tendency to derail and had to be rebuilt with inside cylinders and a cranked axle. Vertical cylinders were the norm at this time (other builders used them too), the theory being that a horizontal or inclined arrangement would lead to premature wear due to the weight of the piston.Rendell p. 12. Four or five locomotives were built at a price fixed by the railway company of between £900 and £1000 each. John Galloway junior commented late in life that:
The success to come with stationary steam engines was in no small part based on the experiences with the short-lived railway locomotive production: the locomotives had boilers rated for , compared to the normal stationary engine boiler rating at that time of .Rendell p. 4. To put this into context, however, John Galloway senior is reported to have said that the challenges of building a locomotive were nothing compared to those of getting it out of the works and onto the railway afterwards.Rendell p. 48. He elaborated that
By this time the partnership were producing a wide range of engineered items, including: wagons and associated parts for collieries and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; machinery for silk mills and for salt works; steam engines for cotton mills; pipes for Benjamin Joule's Salford Brewery in New Bailey Street, Salford; and also a lead rolling mill.Chaloner p. 108.
William Galloway junior was born in 1796 and on 14 February 1804 his brother, John, was born at his father's Lombard Street address.Chaloner p. 101. The brothers were both apprenticed for seven years to their father from the age of 14, William as an ironfounder and John as a millwright and engineer. Bowman's son, William, was similarly apprenticed as a millwright from 1821.Chaloner p. 103. In the last year of his apprenticeship, 1824, John Galloway went to Dunkirk to install engines, boilers and pumps for the French government.
William Galloway senior died on 7 September 1836 and some time between April and December 1838 James Bowman also died. Glasgow had given Bowman six months' notice of his wish to terminate the partnership on 11 April 1838. In 1839 the Galloway brothers bought some of the stock of the erstwhile partnership which was being disposed of by auction. The Caledonia foundry building was subsumed by Central Station by the 1890s.
It is possible that William Glasgow was still conducting business as an ironfounder in 1841 from an address at Gloucester Street.
W & J Galloway
The Galloway brothers worked for their father's partnership until in 1835, not long before its demise they set up business together as W. and J. Galloway. They had been considering such a move since at least 1830, with John saying many years later that "there were too many in partnership already, and conflicting interests began to present themselves".Chaloner p. 104.
The brothers built a foundry at Knott Mill, near Chester Road in Hulme on the site of former premises which had served a similar purpose but had fallen into disuse subsequent to the death of its owner, Alexander Brodie, in 1811. The site was near to William's address as known in 1832, which was 26 Jackson's Lane, Hulme. (The lane was subsequently renamed Great Jackson Street).Chaloner p. 119. A key advantage of the site was the adjacent River Medlock, sources of water being vital for iron founding and the operation of steam engines, and it was the erosion caused by this watercourse which required the works to be built on two levels.Archives of Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester It has been noted that the Medlock had a greater concentration of steam engines along its length than any other similar river in England and the quality of the water was so poor, due to industrial pollution, that there were immense difficulties with priming in steam engine boilers.Hills p. 129.
Before 1840 the firm had manufactured at least two steam engines, the first for Hayward of Yeovil, Somerset and the second for a mill in Glossop, Derbyshire. In that year they were successful in gaining much work in the manufacture of gas pipes and equipment for gasworks, a new and burgeoning industry. From 1842 until June 1847 the brothers were in partnership, as Galloways & Company, with Joseph Haley, in Manchester and Paris, as "Manufacturers of Patent Screw or Lifting Jacks, and as Patentees of Machines for cutting, punching and compressing Metals, and of the Rivets and other articles constructed by the said last-mentioned Machines ... [and] as Cotton Banding Manufacturers". In that month the partnership was dissolved and the Galloways continued to manufacture the machines and rivets in Manchester and Haley continued with the rivets in Paris. By 1856 they had six of these machines in their factory and manufactured two tons of rivets per machine per day, the devices being operated by one man and 20 boys.Chaloner p. 110. An example of a wooden-bodied Galloway-Haley lifting jack is in Museo del Ferrocarril (railway museum) in Madrid. The patents were Haley's; for example, patent number 8768 of 31 December 1840 for an improved lifting jack and compressor.
From 1848 the brothers took out numerous patents related to steam power, with John Galloway taking a particular interest in issues to improve the efficiency of boilers. Before that they had registered at least one design to improve efficiency under the Copyright of Designs Act 1843 (6 & 7 Vict. c. 65).Chaloner p. 111. The most significant of the early patents was that of 11 March 1851 (England and Wales) and 14 April 1851 (Scotland) for the Galloway boiler, (UK patent 13532/1851, extended in 1865 for a further five years). They had built boilers of this type before the patent was granted, since at least 1849, and one was exhibited in 1851 at the Great Exhibition before being purchased by the West Ham Gutta Percha Company. The firm built approximately 9,000 of the type by 1891 and licensed the design for manufacture by other parties. So much work was created by this aspect of the business that in 1872 premises were obtained on Hyde Road, near Ardwick railway station, to handle it, leaving the Knott Mill works to concentrate on building engines.Chaloner p. 112.
The Lancashire boiler, which formed the basis on which the Galloways developed their 1851 design, had been patented by Sir William Fairbairn and John Hetherington in 1844. In 1854 Fairbairn was sent a warning letter by the firm regarding what they believed to be an infringement of their patents. Nine years previously the Galloways had done the same to James Lillie, a former business partner of Fairbairn, with reference to a boiler-related design that they alleged had been registered by them in 1845, although there is no record of any such designs or patents of the type which were registered by the Galloways between 1843 and 1845.Chaloner p. 120.
The Galloway boiler was not entirely the work of the brothers as they sought the advice of Robert Armstrong, a consulting engineer, in 1850 and it was he who arranged for the boiler to be exhibited in 1851. Similarly, Sekon notes that at least one Galloway patent relating to boilers was originally devised by another person: Timothy Hackworth's 1830 design for the boiler of his locomotive The Globe was later patented by the Galloways for use with stationary steam engines.
Working with Bessemer