ONE of four old family-album type pictures, sent by a reader to whom they are a mystery -- she thinks they may be of friends of her grandfather to whom, it is believed, the pictures originally belonged -- this one of a devoted couple taken near what appears to be an outfitter's and milliner's premises may be of close interest to someone in Darwen.

For that's where the photographs turned up in family possessions and one -- that of an elderly man -- was taken in by Darwen photographer Thomas Lindsay who had a studio in Duckworth Street in the early part of the last century.

Another, clearly from the same period, is of a buxom, late-middle-aged woman wearing a twill-patterned full-length skirt and was taken at the 'Wellington Studio' of Blackpool photographer Ellis Wolstenholme while the fourth is of a young man in a bandsman's or military tunic and was taken at Blackpool by photographer Isaac Wilde who had premises at South Beach and branches at Church Street and the Winter Gardens. If these clues connect these long-gone portrait sitters with your family, drop Looking Back a line for the pictures to become yours.