Shedding light on Capital's dark influence

THE gruesome story of Dr Jekyll and his depraved alter ego Mr Hyde has fascinated readers for more than a century. The 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with its tale of the battle between good and evil within one man, enjoyed worldwide success and elevated Robert Louis Stevenson to the status of bestselling author of his time. Even today the impact of the story is such that the term "Jekyll and Hyde" is commonly used to describe people with a split or dual personality.

A new documentary presented by Edinburgh crime writer Ian Rankin traces the roots of the extraordinary story back to Stevenson's childhood in the Capital. Although the novella is set in London, Rankin tells how the grave-robbers, prostitutes and characters of his home city all helped inspire the disturbing account of Dr Henry Jekyll's double life.

Rankin also classes Stevenson as a huge influence on his own career. He says: "When my first Rebus was published I found to my surprise that everyone thought I'd written a crime novel. Nobody guessed that I was trying to follow in the footsteps of a novelist like Stevenson."

Robert Louis Stevenson was a sickly child who inherited weak lungs from his mother and as a result spent a lot of time indoors being looked after by his nurse. Alison "Cummy" Cunningham would entertain him with thrilling stories in the bedroom of his home in Heriot Row, Edinburgh.

Cummy was a fire and brimstone Free Presbyterian from Fife with a boundless capacity for stories vivid enough to keep the young Stevenson with a ready store of material for his frequent nightmares. What made the stories so terrifying for the author was that many of them really happened on Edinburgh's streets.

One of the tales she told was about Edinburgh's most famous warlock, Major Thomas Weir - a 17th-century Covenanter - and his sister Jean. The Covenanters, whose aim was to maintain the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, held their meetings outdoors and their leaders were masked - all fuel to young Louis' imagination.

Weir became the leader of a group within the Covenanters. One day at Magdalene Chapel, a Covenanter church, Weir confessed that his piety had been a front and that he had committed every carnal sin imaginable. He was reported to the authorities and Jean confessed as well. She showed up to her interrogation with a horseshoe shape on her forehead, which was said to be the devil's mark.

The siblings told the Lord Provost how they had made a pact with the devil. Weir was burnt at the stake and his sister was judged mad and hanged. He refused a final request to repent and his dying words were: "I have lived as a beast and I must die as a beast."

Another of the terrifying characters who thrilled young Louis' dreams was Edinburgh's best known 18th-century burglar Deacon William Brodie. The cabinet-maker and council member by day turned burglar at night to fund his gambling debts and support his family and two mistresses.

He worked in the homes of Edinburgh's wealthy New Town residents and after making their cabinets made copies of their door keys and went back at night to seize his booty. Brodie's last crime was a failed raid on the Capital's excise offices, after which he fled to London and then the Netherlands. He was extradited home, where he was tried and hanged in 1788.

What must have added to the terror induced by Cummy's story was the fact that Stevenson's bedroom in Heriot Row had a cabinet made by Brodie. The youngster became obsessed with Brodie and even went on to write a play about him.

Stevenson penned a precursor to Jekyll and Hyde - The Body Snatcher - after drawing inspiration from the criminal handiwork of two other Edinburgh characters, William Burke and William Hare.

Edinburgh was an important centre of medical study and Stevenson was fascinated by the fact that doctors were forced to lead double lives to get cadavers to dissect. The bodysnatching industry was rampant in the 18th century and gangs nicknamed resurrectionists invaded the cemeteries at night. The most skilled could unearth a body in only 15 minutes and would then earn up to 15 guineas for it. In those days only executed criminals could be used for dissection, so there were never enough to go around the medical profession. Such was the need for skilled surgeons that the authorities turned a blind eye to much of the bodysnatching.

But Burke and Hare, right, took bodysnatching to a whole new level by opening a boarding house, murdering the guests and selling their bodies to the College of Surgeons. When the unscrupulous pair were found out Burke was hanged and his body donated for dissection. His death mask and a wallet made of his skin are still on display today.

Although Stevenson lived in the New Town, much of his youth was spent mixing with the low society of Edinburgh's Old Town, where he went drinking and visited prostitutes. He was aware of the duality of the city's personality, with the outwardly respectable New Town set against the underbelly of the Old Town, where many wealthy people went to vent their suppressed passions and engage in all manner of vices.

Ian Rankin says he drew inspiration from The Strange Tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for his bestselling Rebus novels and gave the character of his detective inspector a similar doppelganger from his past, a former friend who returns to destroy him. He refuses to see Mr Hyde as a monster, instead viewing him as part of Dr Jekyll's personality that has been liberated from social constraints.

When Stevenson read aloud his manuscript to his wife Fanny, she was horrified at its lack of moral centre. The author threw it in the fire and within three days had completely rewritten it into a novella which would both shock and compel and go on to inspire scores of major stage performances and films - as well as future bestselling novelists.

Says Rankin: "I owe a great debt to Robert Louis Stevenson and to the city of his birth. In a way they both changed my life. Without Edinburgh's split nature Stevenson might never have dreamt up Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and without Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I might never have come up with my own alter ego Detective Inspector John Rebus."

• Ian Rankin Investigates: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is on BBC Four on Saturday at 9.55pm after the first of a six-part new drama series Jekyll on BBC One at 9pm.