My credentials are already public record on this estimable Forum, but I’ll reiterate them briefly. I attended infant and junior school in a small, hardworking but relatively poor town in the English Midlands in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Poverty then meant not having enough resources to eat well or clothe your children properly not, as today, being unable to afford a 42-inch wide-screen TV and two foreign holidays a year. A fair number of my fellow pupils were from homes affected by poverty.
At the infant and junior schools corporal punishment was the norm, from smacking through slippering. Some teachers used it less than others.