Bathgate, par. and manufacturing and market town, W. Linlithgowsh., 17 miles SW. of Edinburgh, 24 miles E. of Glasgow, and 385 miles from London by rail -- par., 10,876 ac., pop. 9450; town, pop. 4887; P.O., T.O., 3 Banks, 1 newspaper. Market-day, Tuesday. Extensive coal, iron, paraffin oil, and lime works are in the vicinity. Here the celebrated Torbanehill gas-coal is worked. The town was the birthplace of Sir James Y. Simpson (1811-1870), the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.

(John Bartholomew, Gazetteer of the British Isles (1887))