GILLOW, THOMAS (1769–1857), catholic divine, fourth son of Richard Gillow of Singleton, Lancashire, by Isabel, sister and heiress of Henry Brewer of Moor House, Newton-cum-Scales, received his education in the English College at Douay. When the professors and students were imprisoned by the French revolutionists, he succeeded in making his escape to England, and continued his studies in the college at Crook Hall, Durham. After being ordained priest in 1797 he was appointed chaplain to the Clavering family at Callaly Castle, Northumberland. In 1817 he was selected by the propaganda to preside as bishop over the vicariate of the West Indies, but he declined the episcopate. In 1821 he left Callaly Castle, to take charge of a new mission at North Shields, where he laboured till his death, on 19 March 1857. He was the author of:
- ‘Catholic Principles of Allegiance illustrated,’ Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1807, 8vo.
- ‘A Letter to the Rev. William Hendry Stowell on the Rule of Faith,’ North Shields, 1830, 8vo.
[Information from Joseph Gillow, esq.; Catholic Miscellany (1830), new ser. iii. 193; funeral oration by J. W. Bewick; Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary; Brady's Episcopal Succession, vol. iii.]
GILLRAY, JAMES (1757–1815), caricaturist, was born in 1757. His father, who is said to have been a Lanark man with the same christian name, had served as a trooper under the Duke of Cumberland in Flanders, and fought at Fontenoy. About 1746, having lost an arm, he became an out-pensioner of Chelsea Hospital, and afterwards filled for forty years the post of sexton to the Moravian burying-ground at Chelsea, where he was himself interred in 1799. His son James is the only one of his descendants of whom any record has been preserved. Nothing is known of his early training beyond the fact that at a fitting age he was (like Hogarth) apprenticed to a letter-engraver. Whether this was because he had shown a talent for drawing is not stated, but he seems to have begun to design during his apprenticeship. Becoming tired of a monotonous employment, he ran away and joined a troop of strollers. Quitting these again, after a brief experience, to enter himself as a student of the Royal Academy, he began speedily to acquire that grasp and knowledge of figure drawing which is one of his characteristics. Concurrently with his labours at the Academy, he is thought to have studied engraving with W. W. Ryland [q. v.], whose dot-manner he practised, and with Bartolozzi. He must have begun in good time to exercise his satiric talent, for an early etching which is ascribed to him, a caricature of Lord North, with an owl on his head, entitled ‘A Committee of Grievances and Apprehensions,’ is dated 12 June 1769, or when he was a boy of twelve. Other anonymous efforts succeeded, for some of which he is believed to have used the initials of Pitt's caricaturist, James Sayer, but he was first revealed in his own name by a design called ‘Paddy on Horseback’ (the horse being a bull), which bears date 4 March 1779. After 1780 his works, which had hitherto been chiefly devoted to social subjects, became almost exclusively political, and his long career as a political caricaturist may be said to have begun in 1782 with the series of designs in which he signalised the popular victory of Rodney over De Grasse off Guadeloupe.
From this time until 1811, when he engraved his last plate, he continued to pour out the characteristic pictorial satires which for nearly thirty years delighted Londoners, and induced an astonished German visitor to declare that England was ‘altogeder von libel.’ The royal family, the court, the nobility, the ministry, ‘all sorts and conditions of men,’ were freely ridiculed by this daring censor, who, after publishing with Holland of Oxford Street, Fores of Piccadilly, and others, finally took up his residence with, and practically confined his efforts to, the establishment of Miss (by courtesy Mrs.) H. Humphrey, which, originally located in the Strand, passed afterwards to New Bond Street, then to Old Bond Street, and ultimately to No. 29 St. James's Street. Here, while the artist was working above in his eager, feverish way, often wounding his fingers by the ‘burr’ thrown up in the rapid progress of his needle over the copper, his brightly coloured works were dispensed in the shop beneath by Miss Humphrey or her giggling assistant, Betty Marshall. One of his prints, ‘Very Slippy-Weather’ (10 Feb. 1808), represents the famous old shop, with its accustomed crowd outside (a crowd often so great that the passer-by had to quit the footway in order to get by), and decorated by many well-known designs. Another, ‘Twopenny Whist’ (11 Jan. 1796), shows Miss Humphrey herself in a white satin trimmed cap, Mortimer the picture dealer, a German friend, Schotter, and the radiant Betty, who is exhibiting the trump card. Mortimer, who was Miss Humphrey's neighbour in St. James's Street, also appears in ‘Connoisseurs examining a collection of George Morlands’ (16 Nov. 1807). Gillray continued to be an inmate of Miss Humphrey's house until he died. She made
