Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2509 Private Irwin William Cuthbert Farrell, 4th Reinforcements, 29th Battalion. An insurance agent of Elsternwick, Victoria, Farrell embarked on 14 March 1916 aboard HMAT Anchises (A68). He returned to Australia in mid-1919, a member of the 32nd Battalion. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a 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. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks. The name J W C Farrell is recorded in the register, but there is no soldier recorded on nominal or embarkation rolls with this combination of initials, but his identity has been confirmed as 2509 Irwin William Cuthbert Farrell, 29th Battalion. The register clearly states J not I as the first initial, and is most likely mis-transcribed by the studio.