The cane was one of the most common methods of punishment, used by nearly all masters and a few senior boys. A lot of punishments were pretty minor – one or two strokes in front of the class, nearly always on the bottom, though sometimes on the hand – but formal public canings sometimes took place and some senior teachers could and did cane, in private, on the bare backside in serious cases – that happened to me twice and it was no joke. There was relatively mild corporal punishment and there was severe corporal punishment as well. One was routine, the other was pretty rare – getting it twice would have been extremely unusual, even getting it once was an event.