It is important not to imagine every teacher enthusiastically wandering around school carrying a plimsoll.
Practices varied enormously.
Some teachers rarely or never used corporal punishment.
Others relied upon detention, lines or sending troublesome pupils to senior staff.
Some schools reserved serious physical punishment for the headmaster.
Elsewhere individual classroom teachers were permitted considerable discretion.
Even within the same school, pupils might encounter one teacher who never touched the slipper and another who seemed to have it permanently within reach.
There was no universal British system.
