Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4568 Private (Pte) James Anderson McLaughlin. A carpenter from Dunkeld, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte McLaughlin embarked with the 14th Reinforcements, 14th Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Ballarat on 18 February 1916. Following training in Egypt he was posted to the 46th Battalion and was wounded in the left leg and admitted to hospital. After re-joining his battalion he re-admitted to hospital suffering from shell shock. After again re-joining his unit he was killed in action in Belgium on 1 October 1917. Having no known grave he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a permit 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.