Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4213 Private (Pte) William Rupert Hoare and an unidentified soldier (positions unknown). A farmer from Apsley, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Hoare embarked with the 13th Reinforcements, 5th Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Demosthenes on 29 December 1915. Later posted as missing in action it was subsequently discovered that he had been killed in action on 7 May 1917 near Pozieres and buried nearby. Following the Armistice his remains could not be located although in 1929 they were eventually recovered and re-interred in the Serre Road Cemetery No 2, Beaumont Hamel, France. 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.