Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

A portrait of S Knight copied for the Cobram Honour Roll. The soldier is probably 572 Private Stewart Thomas Knight, a fireman from Cobram, Victoria, prior to enlistment. Knight embarked from Melbourne with Section 2, Railway Unit, aboard HMAT Ballarat (A70) on 19 February 1917. A few months later the Ballarat was sunk by a torpedo while transporting troops from Australia to England. Knight wrote a poem titled "While the Ballarat was sinking" (Anzac Day, April 25, 1917), and registered copyright on it. During his service Knight transferred to the 1st Light Railway Operating Company as a Sapper. In July 1917 he suffered gas poisoning and returned to Australia on 20 December 1917 with nephritis and heart problems. Stewart Knight also served in the Second World War. During the First World War the Cobram and District Soldiers Fund initiated a project to create a Cobram Honour Roll. It was to include portraits of servicemen who had links to the Cobram area. The Fund arranged for portraits to be copied by the Darge Photographic Company at its Collins Street Studio, Melbourne. Around 100 copy prints were supplied by the Darge company but it is not known if the roll was ever constructed. In the 1930s, the Australian War Memorial purchased 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. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks.