There was one incident at my grammar school in the 60’s that we all thought might lead to a public caning. A boy had reported that something quite valuable was missing, presumed stolen, from his locker. The headmaster called a special assembly of the whole school and arranged for the prefects to conduct a search of all the lockers while we all waited in suspense to see if anyone was going to be caught red-handed.
Well nothing was found, so it all fizzled out. (I don’t know whether the missing article was ever found.) But we were having visions of some unfortunate boy being dragged up to the front platform by a couple of prefects and the headmaster going back to his study and emerging with a cane to conduct a public thrashing in full view of the whole school.