30/11/2023
A wonderful piece of history
Jeppe High School for Boys Staff Transport, long ago! Mr. W.F. Candy in his fancy automobile in front of Friedenheim.
I tried to find out who Mr Candy was. Found something in the 1939 School Magazine, piece written by W.F.C, W . F . Candy, B.A .
(I copied and pasted the text so there might be a few anomalies)
" LOOKING BACKWARD On 29th May, 1900, Burgher Deneys Reitz, with a small party of Boers, was shooting at me—and other members of Compton’s Horse—from a coal dump across the Vaal River at Vereeniging. Meanwhile, the railway bridge was being blown up. Their task accomplished, the enemy retired, and I proceeded to invade the Transvaal by riding through Viljoen’s Drift. It seems that my fortunes were destined, for better or for worse, to be linked with Jeppe High School. On 1st June, as a humble member of Lord Roberts’s advance guard, I rode from Germiston (then called Elandsfontein) along what is now Highland Road, down Marshall Street, and past the grounds of “ Hohenheim .” That imposing mansion was soon to be the headquarters of Lord Roberts and of Lord Kitchener before it was reoccupied by its owner, Sir Julius Jeppe. It was later acquired by Sir Abe Bailey, who disposed of it to the provincial authorities in 1916, when it achieved the crowning glory of its career and became Tsessebe House. Little did the humble trooper think, as he rode down Marshall Street, that one day . . . H is thoughts were most probably occupied with the necessities of the moment and the possibility of a meal in the immediate future. A fortnight later he was bivouacking on the ridge where Parktown H.S. now stands, and for the next five months he was camped on the summit of Northcliff, alias Asvogel Kop, from which lofty coign of vantage he kept an eagle eye—at times—on the movements of a stray commando. On 4th July, 1901, he was one of 40 policemen at Florida when Kemp's commando made an unsuccessful night attack on the village. Attacking policemen is always risky work, but the gallant General managed to escape arrest on that occasion. * * * I arrived at Jeppe in July, 1912, just in time to help the masters beat the boys at cricket on Murray Park and to do a bit of spade-work on the front ground to enable the boys to beat the masters the next year. The convicts working on the ground wore black-and-white jerseys. One morning one of them bolted down Roberts Avenue with the warders and other convicts in hot pursuit. The local inhabitants thought the School had organised a cross-country run. In 1914 the notorious Foster gang was run to earth in a cave at the back of the Kensington bowling green. A string of police cars racing past the cricket ground was the signal to down bats and rush to see the fun. Col. Vachell, my former sergeant in Compton’s Horse, was in charge, and so I was privileged to hear the su***de shots and see the bodies brought to No. 67 December, 1939 29 the surface. From my childhood I have been a keen student of criminology. Special trams were run to bring out sightseers, and an enterprising citizen offered to lease the cave for entertainment purposes! An unimaginative Council, however, ordered it to be blocked up. In those days of so-called coeducation it was a criminal offence for a girl to walk to school with a boy, even if he lived next door to her! The boys used to crowd to the hockey m atches on C ground, but the girls were not encouraged to watch the football. School dances, plays or concerts were unheard of. The girls once had a swimming competition, which the masters and boys were not allowed to attend. Before the annexe was built we were becoming rather crowded. The woodwork room, with the aid of a partition, housed one class, and the Shell (a dud Three) found refuge in the writing-room, which was then called the French room. For some years Mr. Thomson had a Standard V in the west lab. So perfect was his discipline that (it was said) he could be absent for three days at a time and no one was any the wiser. The senior boy used to take the form as a m atter of course. The room at the back of Mr. M arshall’s workshop was a stable, used by a few boys who rode to school from the wilds of the present Queen Street. Mr. Thomson sometimes arrived on horseback With a couple of greyhounds in leash, and the Adjutant occasionally borrowed this noble charger to lead the Cadets on a route march. The block of four cottages next to Oribi housed Mr. Payne, Mr. Manduell, Mr. Vines and the boarders, who dined in a wood-and-iron “ hall” in the back garden. The cloak-room was dear old Sergeant R ow at’s office —there was nothing so dignified as a secretary in those days. How he ever did any work in that confined space with masters (and mistresses) wandering in and out and borrowing pencils or an occasional golden sovereign, has always been a mystery. Fortunately, he was almost stone deaf. Before Mr. Childe succeeded Mr. Vines as ’Mpiti Housemaster, we lived together for a term in Doris Street, Here I was weak enough to assist him with the Magazine, with the result that Mr. Childe, by the skilful use of a little flattery, to which I have always been peculiarly susceptible, was soon able to retire unobtrusively from the editorship. I once promised to take the ’Mpitis to a really exciting place for their next Sunday walk. It seems that I must have drawn on my imagination, for in his letter home the youngest, aged seven, with stoical resignation, informed his mother ihat she would probably not see him again as the master was going to take them to a cave where there lived an ogre who ate small boys. Form IV will no doubt appreciate this little story as an example of humour of yesterday. I was the first master to own a car, a two-seater Ford of doubtful ancestry. I t was not a self-starter; indeed, it frequently took the united efforts of a dozen Tsessebes to launch 30 T h e J eppe H igh S chool M agazine it on its venturesome career. How curiously history repeats itself. And now the time has come to say good-bye. I have seen many generations of Jeppe boys grow up from nice little Form I boys into perhaps not quite so nice Form Y boys; I have taught the fathers or the mothers of some of you; on the scoring board and in this magazine have I recorded your achievements. You have frequently provoked me to wrath, and I have said hard things about y o u ; but long after most of you have forgotten me I shall be cherishing pleasant memories of my twentyseven years at Jeppe. Valete! W.F.C
