Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3775 Private (Pte) William Benton, 9th Reinforcements, 24th Battalion, of South Richmond, Vic. Pte Benton enlisted on 13 December 1915 and embarked aboard HMAT Warilda on 8 February 1916. On 5 August 1916 he was killed in action at Pozieres in France. His death was originally commemorated at the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial for servicemen without a known grave, but in 1957 his body was located in an isolated grave just north of the village of Pozieres in the Somme. His remains were identified from his effects including his aluminium ID tag. His body was exhumed and reburied in the London Cemetery Extension, Highwood Longueval, France. 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.