Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Portrait of 2569 Private (Pte) Albert Benton, carpenter, of Brighton, Victoria. He enlisted in the 24th Battalion on 28 July 1915 and embarked from Melbourne on HMAT Ulysses on 27 October 1915 for Egypt. Pte Benton transferred to the 60th Battalion on 23 February 1916 and then to the 59th Battalion on 18 Mar 1916. He was admitted to hospital with influenza in March 1916 and was discharged for duty on 20 April 1916 in time to rejoin his unit which was relocated to France and the Western Front. Pte Benton was killed in action on 19 July 1916, aged 20 years. He has no known grave and his name is recorded on the Australian Cemetery Memorial, Fromelles, 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 a unit name, for each negative.