Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 1622 Private (Pte) Clifford Miner Bigelow, 59th Battalion. A carpenter of South Yarra, Victoria, he enlisted on 1 February 1916 and embarked on HMAT Port Lincoln on 4 May 1916 for Suez and then on to England for training. On 18 November 1916 he proceeded to France to join his battalion. Pte Bigelow was admitted to hospital on 14 December 1916 suffering from acute bronchitis and died of the disease 4 days later on 18 December 1916. He was aged 40 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.