Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 10589 Sapper (Spr) Eric Richard Butt, 3rd Divisional Signals Company. A law clerk from Elsternwick, Victoria prior to enlistment, Spr Butt embarked from Melbourne on HMAT Ascanius on 27 May 1916. Later promoted to Corporal, he was killed in action in Belgium on 3 August 1917, aged 23, and was buried in the Kandahar Farm Cemetery, Pleogsteert, Belgium. See also DA15520. 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.