His life was spent improving the lot of miners and working to determine the causes of explosions and accidents in mines and finding ways of preventing them or alleviating their impact.
Galloway attended a private school in Scotland before going to Germany where he studied at the University of Giessen and the Technische Universitat Bergakademie Freiberg.
He found that both the timbers and miners furthest from the point of ignition were the most severely burned, reinforcing his theory that in dry mines coal dust spreads the explosion.
[10] His conclusions were accepted by the coroner and 'watering' and spreading stone dust were introduced as a result of his observations at Llan.
In 1876 he delivered lectures in Paris, France with Jules Pierre Callon and Sir Clement le Neve Foster, which have been translated and printed in 'Lectures on mining delivered at the School of Mines, Paris'[11] By the start of the 1880s his theories on the dangers of coal dust were being taken more seriously and have been discussed in many books and articles from then to the present day.
[12][13][14][15][16] In 1884, he was called on to give evidence at the Penycraig disaster and his evidence, as printed in the Cardiff Western Mail 1884, is held by the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers NEIMME,[17][18] along with a course of lectures on mining given by him for the South Wales Institute of Engineers in 1900.
[27] He wrote papers on his findings and presented them to the Institute of Mining, the Royal Society, the Athenaeum Club, London and anyone else who would listen.
[32][33] Galloway devised an improved walling cradle enabling two teams of workers to operate on different levels at the same time.
He installed a compressed air system using two engines to raise and lower equipment at Llanbradach colliery.
[39][40] On 22 February 1917 he presented a paper to the Commission on Mines at the Houses of Parliament with regard to his findings on the explosive properties of coal dust.
[41] Sir William Galloway died 2 November 1927 at his home in Park Place, Cardiff,[42] where he is buried in Cathay Cemetery.