gallows

thumb|Unidentified men wait at the gallows before execution of List of people executed in Texas, 1910–1919|Melquiades Chapa and Jose Buenrostro on May 19, 1916, in [[Brownsville, Texas.]] thumb|right|A hangman positions the noose around the neck of a Japanese war crimes|Japanese war criminal as he is held steady by a British military officer just prior to his execution by hanging at the gallows in [[Changi Prison in Singapore 1946. The condemned man is standing within a circle on the trapdoor, and on either side of him are two other circles indicating that the gallows had the provision for multiple simultaneous executions.]] thumb|Illustration of hanging during the Thirty Years' War thumb|These gallows in Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park are maintained for historical purposes by [[Arizona State Parks.]] thumb|upright|New Drop gallows in Rutland County Museum thumb|upright=1.3|Execution of Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, [[David Herold, and George Atzerodt on July 7, 1865, after trapdoor has been sprung, at Fort McNair, in Washington]]

A gallows (or less precisely scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a projecting framework from which a ship's anchor might be raised so it is no longer sitting on the seabed, riverbed or dock; "weighing [the] anchor" meant raising it using this apparatus while avoiding striking the ship's hull.