Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3502 Acting Sergeant Joshua Liddell Davidson, 22nd Battalion who was a 19 year old railway clerk from Deep Lead, via Stawell, Victoria, when he enlisted and embarked for overseas with the 8th Reinforcements from Melbourne on 5 January 1916 aboard HMAT Afric. He joined the 57th Battalion in Egypt and in June 1916, went to the Western Front with them and saw action in France and Belgium. On 27 August 1919 he married Gertrude Amy Elliston in Essex, England, and he and his wife, returned to Australia on 20 February 1920, Davidson with the rank of Orderly Room Sergeant. 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. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks.