Prince’s Avenue home was key in rebellion

During the 1922 rebellion, the position of this house (Prince’s Avenue) at what was then the western edge of Benoni, meant it was on the front line of the March battle between the strikers and the troops sent by Smuts to recapture the town.

The home on Prince’s Avenue.

Armed strikers came to the door demanding to be let in because, being a double storey, they wanted to use it as lookout post.

Pat Waddell’s father, a large Irishman, stood behind the lower part of the stable door at the front of the house adamantly proclaiming: “You can’t come in here.”

He was lucky they didn’t shoot him before they moved off.

However, the family had to spend the next three days in the pantry where, like the Bakers at the other end of the town, they lined the walls with mattresses to stop any stray bullets coming in from the battle raging around them.

When dawn broke on the fourth day and they looked westwards, they saw a whole regiment of soldiers lying in the grass pointing their rifles at the house.

They grabbed a white table cloth, rushed upstairs and waved it out of the window, yelling “We’re loyal!”

The soldiers believed them and, after securing the house, advanced into Benoni from which the strikers had by then fled.

Information supplied by Glynis Cox Millett-Clay.