Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3847 Private (Pte) John O’Beirne Hart. Originally from Kenilworth, England, Pte Hart was a labourer from Whittlesea, Victoria prior to enlistment and embarked with the 9th Reinforcements, 23rd Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Warilda on 8 February 1916. Later suffering from shell shock he was evacuated to a divisional rest station. Following his recovery he re-joined his battalion and was posted as missing in action. It was subsequently confirmed that he had been killed in action on 3 May 1917 and, having no known grave, he is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial. 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.