”Biffer”, would have been a Dublin expression, I think. We always referred to it as the ”leather”, or sometimes as ‘the strap”. Indeed the excesses of the teaching religious orders in Ireland is now well documented, with several reports giving graphic details of excessive punishments administered in Irish schools. What I often try to figure out, is why so many lay teachers, mostly married with children of their own, could leave the severest nun in the halfpenny place as regards excessive beatings.
I often wonder, do people who never got slapped with leather, actually realize the devastating effects it produces? The searing, throbbing pain is beyond description.
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