Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Portrait of W N Lawler copied for the Cobram Honour Roll. D Lawler and N D Lawler are listed on the Roll published regularly in the Cobram Courier newpaper during the war. The soldier is probably 86 Private (Pte) Douglas Norman Lawler, a farmer from Yarroweyah, Victoria, prior to enlistment. Pte Lawler embarked from Melbourne with the 10th Machine Gun Company aboard HMAT Ascanius (A11) on 27 May 1916. During his service Lawler was promoted to Sergeant and transferred to the 3rd Machine Gun Battalion. He returned to Australia on 12 June 1919. 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.