Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Portrait of Private (Pte) James Bellett, labourer, of Dandenong, Victoria who enlisted in the 21st Battalion on 10 July 1915. He embarked on RMS Osterley on 29 September 1915 for Suez until the Battalion embarked on 19 March 1916 for France and the Western Front. Pte Bellett was wounded in action on 26 August 1916 during the Battle for Mouquet Farm and died later that day in No 1 Casualty Clearing Station located near Warloy-Baillon. He was age 24 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 a unit name, for each negative.