Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2591 Private (Pte) James William Cantwell, 23rd Battalion. A railway employee from Molesworth, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Cantwell embarked with the 6th Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Ulysses on 27 October 1915. Later transferring to the 58th Battalion and then to the 59th Battalion, he was reported as missing in action in France. A subsequent court of enquiry determined that he had been killed in action at Fromelles, aged 29, on 19 July 1916. Following the Armistice his burial place was discovered and his body was exhumed and re-interred in the Ration Farm Military Cemetery, La Chapelle-Darmentieres, France. 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.