Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2636 Private (Pte) Thomas Stanley Fowler, 24th Battalion. A driver from Ballarat, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Fowler embarked with the 6th Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Ulysses on 27 October 1915. Later transferring to the 7th Battalion, he was gassed and evacuated to England. Due to the severity of the gas poisoning he returned to Australia on 13 March 1918 and was medically discharged. 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.