Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4151 Private (Pte) Edwin John Bird. A labourer from Clifton Hill, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Bird embarked with the 13th Reinforcements, 8th Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Demosthenes on 29 December 1915. Later wounded in the right shoulder he was evacuated to England. Following his recovery he re-joined his battalion and on 11 Aug 1918, aged 30, he was killed in action and buried near where he fell. His grave could not be subsequently located and he is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, France. 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. See also DA12828.