Gaol

[L. Fr. gaole; L. Lat gaola, qq. v.] A place of confinement or safe keeping.* Commonly defined also as a prison^ from which, however, it seems properly to be distinguishable; a gaol being a place of temporary confinement, or of confinement for minor offences, or for debt; & prison being a place of permanent confinement, and a place of punishment for crimes. Confinement in a gaol is, in most cases, with reference to some further proceeding, and does not always import guilt in the party confined. Thus gaols are used for the detention of witnesses, in order to secure their attendance in criminal cases, and for the confinement of persons charged with crime and committed for trial.

See 2 N. Y. Rev. St [754,] 632.

The same idea of temporary or preliminary confinement is the radical one of the phrase gaol delivery, which has been used in criminal law from a very remote period; the gaols being by the process of trial delivered of their occupants, who are either wholly discharged if innocent, or punished according to law, if found euilty. See Oaol delivery. An essential difference between the terms is also imported in the common expressions ** county gojol^* and '* state prison,^* The distinction however is by no means strictly observed in statute law, gaol and prison being frequently used as synonymous. Jail is preferred by Webster as the orthography of this Yford^gaol being considered by him as a corruption. The reverse of this however seems to be the truth; gaole and gaola (qq. v.) being the Law-French and Law-Latin forms used constantly and by the earliest writers, while nothing approaching ^at*/ is to be met with. The forms geaule and gaille given by Kelham enable us to trace the corruption from gaol to jail without much difficulty.