Exquisite hundred-year-old photos of British Raj discovered in a shoe box

One of Scotland’s national collections is searching for clues to the identity of a mystery photographer, after finding a collection of exquisite plate glass negatives in a shoe box.

The 178 plate glass negatives – some exactly a century old – were taken in India at the time of the Raj. They were discovered in the RCAHMS archives in a size 9 Peter Lord shoe box. It is most likely that the negatives had been left untouched for almost 100 years.

Archivists at RCAHMS have already confirmed that some of the images were definitely taken in 1912, when King George V and Queen Mary visited Calcutta (now Kolkata), the only visit by a British monarch to India as Emperor of the subcontinent. Some of the photographs show the city’s buildings lit up at night in tribute to the Royal visit.

RCAHMS hope that members of the public and photography enthusiasts might be able to shed more light on this discovery.