The headmistress of the Infant School didn’t quite date back as far as your teacher with the finger cuffs and scrubbing brush, but over the years she had managed to get and maintain a reputation as a very strict disciplinarian who used fearful but unspecified corporal punishments. We children were terrified of her, and even our parents, many of whom had been taught by her, were in awe of her, though no one seemed to have actually suffered any punishment at her hands, and no one did while I was there.
The only teacher in Infant School who actually used corporal punishment was the young woman who taught the top class, and she believed in the short sharp shock theory of child management, which certainly worked on me! The rest of the teachers depended on sheer force of personality, with the odd spell of standing in the corner hands on head for the real hard cases, to maintain order and deliver an excellent education to their classes of 50-plus children.