Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3452 Private (Pte) Edwin Spencer Proctor, 49th Battalion. A native of Birmingham, England Pte Proctor was a farmer prior to enlistment and embarked with the 11th Reinforcements, 9th Battalion from Brisbane on HMAT Warilda on 5 October 1915. After transferring to the 49th Battalion he was wounded in action. Later promoted to the rank of Sergeant, he was killed in action on 5 April 1918 and is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial. 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.