Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Portrait of W N Beaver, probably Lieutenant Wilfred Norman Beaver. Lt Beaver was a commissioned officer with the armed constabulary of Papua when he applied for a commission in the 60th Battalion on 27 December 1915 which was confirmed as 2nd Lieutenant on 1 March 1916. He embarked from Melbourne with the 4th Reinforcements aboard HMAT Orsova on 1 August 1916. He was promoted to Lieutenant on 1 March 1917. Later that month Lt Beaver was evacuated to England suffering from malaria which he had contracted in 1906 during his service in Papua. Lt Beaver rejoined his battalion in France on 28 June 1917 and was wounded in action near Ypres. He died in the 17th Casualty Clearing Station on 26 September 1917, aged 35. 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. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks.