LAST week's query about Dr Jim Jameson has been promptly answered by his son, Michael.

He told me his father first worked as a doctor in St Albans in 1928, and was in a practice at 105 Victoria Street until he moved to the city hospital in 1949, after the foundation of the National Health Service.

He said: "It was one of the first buildings in Victoria Street.

"The senior partner was Grosart Wells. He lived in London Road, where KPMG now are.

"He drove around St Albans in a phaeton a type of horse-drawn carriage with two Dalmatians.

"When the NHS came in there was huge upheaval in St Albans.

"All the doctors had to decide whether they would be consultants or GPs.

"Doctor Jeremy Wilson, who lived in Upper Lattimore Road, stayed as non-NHS doctor until the bitter end."

Mr Jameson remembers the printing firm I asked about last week, but thinks it was called Gibbs-Banforth, not Gibbs and Banforth, after the double-barrelled family who owned it.

He said: "It was a licence to print money. There was a Priscilla Gibbs, who was very keen on zoology.

"As an old lady, she lived in Upper Marlborough Road."

Mr Jameson was able to help me out with another of my recent queries the visit of the Duke of Windsor, as the former King Edward VIII was known, to the Friars Wash point-to-point in the early 1950's.

He said: "My father was the medical officer for the point-to-point.

"It was unpaid they did it in their time off.

"It was a way of getting yourself known locally.

"On one occasion he was in the race himself.

"Two finished, and he came second.

"We were always parked at the winning post, so everybody knew how to find the doc.

"Next to us there was a flat lorry trailer. It was left there for the important people to stand on so they could see the winning post.

"There he was, a little wizened monkey, grinning all over his face.

"He turned up because he liked the venue.

"All the county people like Colonel Part were fawning over him.

"My father refused to shake his hand because of his activities in the war it wasn't the marriage, he thought he was a Nazi."

June 21, 2002 12:30