Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3401 Private (Pte) Harold Griffith. A labourer from Chetwynd, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Griffith qualified as a signaler before embarking with the 9th Reinforcements, 59th Battalion from Sydney on HMAT Port Melbourne on 16 July 1917. Later wounded in action he was evacuated to hospital. On 9 August 1918 he succumbed to his wounds and was buried in the Vignacourt British Cemetery, France. 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.