THE mysterious origin of a set of Victorian photographs depicting Derbyshire scenes has been identified, thanks to forensic science at the University of Derby.

Derbyshire-based photo historian Dr John Bradley called on the expertise of university forensic scientist and handwriting expert Dr Ian Turner to try to discover who had produced the set of 19th-century stereoscopic photographs.

Stereoscopic photography was discovered by the Victorian scientist Sir Charles Wheatstone in the 1840s.

He showed that if two photographs were taken from a few inches apart – at about the same distance as that between the human eyes – and then viewed through a special viewer, the result was a scene with a complete sense of depth, what we now term 3D.

Stereoscopic photographs became a hugely popular Victorian collectable, with millions being sold every year, until they were eventually replaced by the picture postcard as a cheap holiday souvenir.

Images in the collection include popular UK tourist sites such as the Isle of Man, Scotland, Scarborough and Bridlington.

But one important group of photographs remained unattributed because the photographer had not printed his name on the cards.

This unknown group of pictures had some similarities to photographs that were taken by Derbyshire photographer Alfred Seaman, of Chesterfield.

There was some handwriting on the cards, where the photograph's title had been written under each picture.

Dr Turner was asked to identify the handwriting on the unnamed photos to see if they could be matched to the handwriting on the cards that were known to be by Seaman.

After painstaking analysis, Dr Turner was able to determine that the writing was very similar to the writing on Seaman's photographs in more than 55 out of about 65 images.

Dr Turner said: "Many of the photographs had the same handwriting on them as the known Alfred Seaman images.

"Along with stylistic similarities between the two groups of photos, it has made it possible to confidently claim that the majority of this outstanding pictorial record of Victorian life was taken by Seaman."

Dr Bradley, of Ashover, said: "I had always suspected that the pictures might have been taken by Mr Seaman.

"He was a prolific Victorian photographer and we have many very similar looking stereo photos of Matlock and Chatsworth which we know were taken by him."

Dr Bradley explained that Mr Seaman would not have labelled all the images by himself, but would have had a small team of assistants working in his studio, who would have helped in writing the titles on the cards.

He said: "This made Dr Turner's task even more challenging as he had to compare handwriting from a number of different people."

The pair, who have been in contact with the Seaman family for more clues, are contenders for the annual award of the National Stereoscopic Association for historical research into stereoviews.

Dr Bradley won this international prize himself in 2005 and the following year it was won by the rock musician Brian May, guitarist in Queen, who is also a keen stereoview collector.