Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4192 Private (Pte) William Harry Fletcher, 14th Battalion. A labourer from Cobden, Vic prior to enlistment, Pte Fletcher embarked with the 13th Reinforcements from Melbourne aboard HMAT Demosthenes on 29 December 1915. On 1 July 1916 he was killed in action at Bois Grenier in the Somme area of France, aged 25 and was buried in the Brewery Orchard Cemetery, Bois Grenier. 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.