Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3883 Private (Pte) Ernest Jewell Radford. Originally from Dorset, England, Pte Radford was a butcher from Thorpdale, Victoria prior to enlistment and embarked with the 12th Reinforcements, 14th Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Ceramic on 23 November 1915. He later transferred to the 46th Battalion and then the 12th Machine Gun Battalion. Twice evacuated to hospital suffering from scabies and appendicitis he was subsequently promoted to Lance Corporal. On 26 September 1917, aged 24, he was killed in action and buried in the Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood, Flanders, Belgium. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a permit 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.