Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3658 Private (Pte) Percy Vooght. Originally from Chagford, England Pte Vooght was a farm labourer from East Brunswick, Victoria and had been previously been rejected due to bad teeth. After successfully enlisting Pte Vooght embarked with the 8th Reinforcements, 23rd Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Afric on 5 January 1916. He later transferred to the 24th Battalion and was posted as missing in action. A subsequent court of enquiry determined that he had been killed in action on 27 July 1916. 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 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.