MANY readers have telephoned or written in since I recently published a portrait photograph taken more than half-a-century ago.

It was of the man who had clearly compiled the bumper bundle of large photo albums handed in some weeks ago to Nicole Burnett who is in charge of the Worcester Museum of Local Life at Tudor House, in Friar Street.

The person who gave the albums to the museum had bought them at a car boot sale and thought they should either be kept in the city archives or returned to a descendent of the man who had so caringly compiled them.

Though the portrait photograph had been taken in the mid-1940s, readers were quick to identify the man as Dr John McWilliam ("Iain") Duncan who was a popular and much respected GP in Worcester for about 40 years.

His surgeries, with partners, were in the imposing Georgian property at the corner of High Street and Deansway - now the offices of the Portman Building Society. He came to Worcester in 1947, joining the practice of Dr Oliver Terry, and died in the late 1980s at the age of 75.

Within an hour of the publication of the "mystery" photo in Memory Lane I had calls identifying Dr Duncan from Eileen Watson, of Worcester, and Betty Colley, of Monkwood Green, who said her mother had worked for the doctor and his wife Margaret at their homes in Lansdowne Crescent and at Kempsey.

The telephone calls from these two ladies were just the first of many to be received at the office and at my home, all clearly identifying Dr Duncan and singing his praises as a fine family physician.

In my previous Memory Lane article, I also published another photo from Dr Duncan's albums - this time of someone I could recognise myself. He was Dr John Burton who had been a member of Worcester City Council during my years covering local government.

It was clear that Dr Burton, photographed in Army uniform, had been a great friend of Dr Duncan during the Second World War, when both served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Dr Duncan was attached to the Black Watch in the Eighth Army and later served as a surgeon in Algiers and Germany.

Significantly, doctors Duncan and Burton were to be re-united as colleagues after the war when they both became partners in the same Worcester practice at the corner of High Street and Deansway.

Another caller to the office was Hedley Burton of Stephenson Terrace, Worcester, who said it had been "quite a shock" to see his father's wartime photo in the paper. Dr Burton died in January last year at the age of 85 and had, at the time of his friend's death, described Dr Duncan as "a very popular doctor."

Hedley Burton is concerned that Dr Duncan's photo albums should have ended up at a car boot sale and can only assume they must have part of a house clear-out after the death of his widow Margaret last year.

Thanks to Nicole Burnett, Hedley has been to view the photo albums to try to identify further people or scenes, other than those featuring his father, but says all the photos appear to cover the years from 1936, when Dr Duncan qualified, to the late 1940s.

Retired Worcester GP Dr Charles Romer was in touch with me to say Dr Duncan had been a close friend and near neighbour of his at Kempsey for many years. They had often gone angling and shooting together. "He was a great character and could be something of a disciplinarian at times having served with the Black Watch," he said.

Dr L M V ("Les") Griffith, of Powick, was a partner of Dr Duncan's at Worcester for a long period and recalls "the superb working relationship" she had with him. "We both graduated at Aberdeen and he knew members of my family from Aberdeenshire way back. He was a great friend and an absolute gentleman.

"I recall that he took great pleasure in compiling his photo albums and I am clearly upset about their fate. I wonder how they came to be thrown out?"

Mrs Pat Dowty, of Silverdale Avenue, Worcester, was in touch to express the great admiration she had for Dr Duncan who had been her GP for about 40 years. "He was a wonderful man and I was among the many deeply upset at his death." Fortunately, Mrs Dowty kept a cutting of Dr Duncan's obituary from the Worcester Evening News and this has been very helpful to me.

We also had calls for a lot more readers identifying Dr Duncan but the list of names is too long, alas, to give, save to say that I am deeply grateful for the interest shown by these readers. Obviously, many hundreds of today's Worcester citizens would have been delivered into the world under Dr Duncan's supervision during his four decades as a city GP. He would have "delivered" babies to three generations of some families.

And there could well be a happy ending to the whole affair of the photo albums.

I have received calls and letters from two relatives of Dr Duncan - sisters Caroline Meredith of Devises and Eliza Meredith of Bristol - saying that friends of their "Uncle Iain" in Worcester have kindly sent them copies of my Memory Lane article on the photo albums.

"We are especially delighted the albums have been discovered and saved and find it very upsetting and unfortunate they were cleared out and somehow ended up at a car boot sale," Eliza Meredith told me.

"I should so much like to see the albums especially as we have only a few photos of Uncle Iain as a young man," writes Caroline Meredith.

"We will be happy to come up to Worcester to discuss their future with Nicole Burnett. We would very much like to have them," says Eliza Meredith.

I have put Eliza and Caroline in direct touch with Nicole Burnett who tells me there is unlikely to be any barrier to the albums being given to the two sisters, subject to permission from the man who bought them at the car boot sale. However, he has already told Nicole he would very much like them to go to members of the family.