Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 1071 Private (Pte) Hamilton James Egan, 22nd Battalion, holding a snare drum. He is wearing a Lyre badge to signify that he is a bandsman and above that he has a drum badge.An engineering apprentice from Albert Park, Vic prior to enlistment, Pte Egan embarked from Melbourne with the Headquarters Staff aboard HMAT Ulysses on 8 May 1915. After initially being listed as missing in action, it was determined that he was killed in action in France, aged 22, on 18 August 1918. 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.