IT HAD it all: a brilliant scientist obsessed with resurrection and playing God, a hunch-backed bodysnatcher and a dead creature with bolts in its neck brought back to life by a couple of thousand volts of electric current.

Frankenstein, published in 1818, was a brilliant tale reflecting the world's fears of rapid scientific progress upsetting the forces of theology.

But, believe it or not, the real Frankenstein story was happening on our own doorstep - at that exact time.

Evening Times film writer Andy Dougan's new book Raising The Dead: The Men Who Created Frankenstein, reveals Glasgow played home to the first resurrectionist experiments.

His amazing story does not feature hunchbacks, but it does cut open the very heart of early 19th century Glasgow to reveal a world of bodysnatchers, crazed scientists, heinous murderers and, incredibly, the first Frankenstein-like attempts to recreate life.

"I could not quite believe the world I discovered when I researched this book,"

says Andy.

"The backdrop to Glasgow in 1818 is of a changing city.

"The tobacco barons had gone but mass industrialisation was setting in. With that came an incredible need for knowledge.

"Part of this drive forward saw the city's doctors - or anatomists - determined to understand the secrets of life and death and they would do almost anything to have that knowledge."

Andy, 51, has long been fascinated by the Frankenstein story. He was enthralled when, as a young boy, he saw a trailer for a Frankenstein film at the Carlton cinema in Townhead, which was yards from the site of the former hanging gallows.

But he reveals it was a chance remark by his gran, claiming Frankenstein was from Glasgow' that stuck in his mind.

"Somehow, I remembered her wee comment. It would flash back at me from time to time, such as when I later studied the History of Science at university. So a couple of years ago I decided to investigate this Glasgow Frankenstein story."

In the process, he has produced an exciting chronicle of Glasgow's life at that time. It throws up great insight of a city without an established police force, of vigilante groups and social systems such as posts', where one man could slander another by sticking up a public poster.

But it also reveals a city desperate to learn, where 500 ordinary people at a time would turn up to hear the city's top doctors give a lecture on science.

"So much of the city as we know it has gone," says Andy. "It's given over to generic yuppie flats. But this story illuminates a world of fascinating dark characters, a world of duels and rivalries - and sheer excitement."

More importantly, Raising The Dead is a fascinating story.

It begins with an account of the short life of Matthew Clydesdale, from Clarkston. He was a young weaver who, one night full of drink and devilry, beat 80-year-old Alexander Love about the head with a coal pick.

These are some of the book's pictures showing experiments and among the famous people interested in watching the medical procedures was Napoleon

Clydesdale came up with an alibi, but the jury had been told he had come home that night covered in blood, kicked his cat and then "thrown it on the fire to put it out of its misery".

Juries, as a rule, don't take to men who torch pets and he was found guilty of murder at the New Jail on Glasgow Green. But hanging, it turns out, was too good for him.

Or rather, just hanging.

It was decreed the callous killer, described by the Glasgow Chronicle as "indifferent to the proceedings"

should not go from the gallows to the prison graveyard.

Instead, his body would be publicly dissected and anatomised.

"Having shed man's blood, by man let his blood shed," declared the hanging judge.

Now this event did not go at all unnoticed by the city's young doctors.

This band of bright young things were fighting hard, sometimes with each other, to be the first to make the all-important medical discoveries (that would lay the foundations for major advances in medical surgery.) However, they needed bodies to experiment on. But there were only two legal ways to get hold of corpses; doctors could make arrangements with the deceased's relatives, or they could come from the gallows, either by legal decree or by bribing the hangman to deliver them up.

Yet, at this time there was, on average, only one hanging a year in Glasgow. And there were 800 scalpel-armed medical students.

Oh, to have a fresh body delivered "That's where the grave-robbing came in," says Andy. "These bodysnatchers were paid 15 guineas per body and they would go round the likes of Ramshorn Cemetery digging up plots and then delivering the bodies to the anatomists."

That's where the two central characters in Andy's story emerge.

Granville Sharp Pattison was a mercurial creature "whose genius was matched only by his ability to get himself into trouble". He was said to be a highly skilled surgeon who was sometimes overly keen to cut off affected limbs. He clearly loved his work.

And Andrew Ure was "the bad-tempered son of a cheesemaker", who had graduated from Glasgow University and gone into the army. He then went on to become a university lecturer.

NOW, Pattison and Ure were united by their enthusiasm for understanding how the human anatomy worked - but that was the extent of their common purpose because they could not stand each other.

Both wanted to be the first to discover the secrets of life. But what was this secret?

The theory everyone wanted to test was what happened if electric currents were passed through a dead body.

Italian scientist Luigi Glavani had already begun working in a laboratory with frogs and electric current and proved movement.

What if this new galvanism' would work on an expired human? Could a dead man be resurrected?

"These men had to find out," says Andy.

"But at the same time, Glasgow was horrified by the number of body snatchers going around, desecrating graves.

"It was a remarkable situation. And there was also a real fear that man was interfering with nature. Glasgow, as a city, was keen to grasp medical knowledge, but still fearful of the consequences of meddling with God.

"Just how far should experimentation go? You can make comparisons with the stem cell research debate that rages today."

Meanwhile, back on November 4, 1881, the scene was set; the Second City Of The Empire on the edge of greatness, desperate to race forward had executed a violent murderer.

And we had two young doctors with adrenalin pumping through their veins determined to achieve everlasting greatness.

Would the body of Matthew Clydesdale come back to life and help them achieve immortality?

The incredible story goes on to reveal life would never be the same again, not only for the anatomists - and especially not for the young murderer - but also for a stunned Glasgow society and its open-mouthed medical world.

Andy Dougan will be speaking at the launch of Raising The Dead at Borders in Buchanan Street on Thursday at 7pm.