Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of Private (Pte) Thomas Brown, 11th Battalion (later 51st Battalion). Pte Brown, a native of Cornwall, England was a labourer from Woubin, Western Australia, prior to enlistment and embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Aeneas on 30 October 1917 for Devonport , England. He was taken on strength of the 51st Battalion on the Western Front, France, in April 1918 and remained in France until February 1919 when he was granted furlough in England prior to demobilisation in London on 25 July 1919. 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.