Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2636 Private (Pte) William Henry Dudley, 22nd Battalion. A farm hand from Wunghnu, Vic prior to enlistment, Pte Dudley embarked with the 6th Reinforcements from Melbourne aboard HMAT Ulysses on 27 October 1915. Later transferring to the 7th Battalion he was promoted to Sergeant before being killed in action on 22 April 1917 during the Battle of Bullecourt in France, aged 23. He is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial. 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 unit name, for each negative.