Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3236 Private (Pte) Edward William Bonham, labourer, of Melbourne, Victoria, (originally of Woolwich, England). Pte Bonham enlisted in the 5th Battalion on 3 July 1915 and embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Nestor on 11 November 1915 for Egypt. The Battalion relocated to the Western Front, France, in March 1916. Pte Bonham was hospitalised on four occasions suffering from shell shock, exhaustion and trench feet. Pte Bonham was killed in action on 20 September 1917 at the Menin Road Sector, Belgium. He was aged 25 years. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had the concession to take photographs at the Broadmeadows and Seymour army camps during the First World War. In the 1930s, the Australian War Memorial purchased the original glass negatives from Algernon Darge, along with the photographers' notebooks. The notebooks contain brief details, usually a surname or unit name, for each negative.