The discovery of a series of images on life in India during the time of the British Raj has prompted a frenetic search for the identity of the photographer.

It’s fantastic that a small shoe box contained such a treasure trove of images

The 178 plate-glass negatives were found in a shoe box by the Royal Commission in Scotland’s national archives, as revealed in The Times yesterday.

Experts could only confirm that some of the images were taken in 1912, when King George V and Queen Mary visited Calcutta – the only visit by a British monarch to India as emperor of the subcontinent ­– but have no clue as who the photographer might have been.

A number of theories emerged.

One of these is that the photographer was a British civil servant in Calcutta or was connected to the jute trade, as many Scots were said to be at the time.

There is a Scottish cemetery in the city that dates back to the time of the British Raj, which has recently been cleaned up and recorded.

Archivists also approached John Falconer, curator of photographs at the British Library, who helped to identify some of the locations and remarked on the high quality and beauty of the images.

One of the images found shows buildings in the city of Calcutta lit up over the Lal Dighi body of water, commemorating a British royal visit, while another depicts ships arriving at the Chandpal Ghat, the main landing site for visitors to the city along the Hooghly River.

Some of the photographs show Calcutta’s buildings lit up at night.

Archivists’ only hope is that members of the public and photography enthusiasts might be able to shed more light on this find.

Claire Sorensen, the Royal Commission’s architectural historian, said:

“We don’t know for sure how they came to be in our collection because we receive archive material from countless different sources, ranging from the archives kept by architectural practices to generous public donations.

“Sometimes we take in large amounts of material at once and often documentation for historical deposits does not exist.

“Over time all this new material will be inspected and catalogued as part of our collection − undergoing conservation work where necessary − and then made available to the public.

“It’s fantastic that a small shoe box contained such a treasure-trove of photographic imagery, but in some ways it’s not unusual.

“Our experience as an archive has shown us that some of the most interesting discoveries can be made in the most unlikely of places.”