Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 1679 Private (Pte) William Robert Brereton, 2nd Reinforcements, 23rd Battalion. Originally a seaman of Bangor, Wales, Pte Brereton, labourer of Woodend, Victoria, enlisted on 27 May 1915 and embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Demosthenes on 16 July 1915 for Gallipoli. He was admitted to the Australian Casualty Clearing Station suffering from acute bronchitis on 5 November 1915 and was evacuated by hospital ship for Malta. Pte Brereton died of illness at sea on 10 November 1915. He was aged 36 years. 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.