The very occasional teacher (only one in my direct experience) used (or rather misused) it for motives other than the normal one of keeping the children sufficiently fearful to ensure that they sat still, behaved, and paid attention, essential conditions if they were to be properly taught in the large (50 plus) classes of the time. CP of various sorts was also the norm in most homes, and indeed if a child was punished at school and was foolish enough to complain about this at home they would quite often get a repeat dose.
But, and here’s where we differ, girls were subjected to less (I’ll even go so far as to say much less) corporal punishment than boys in both schools and homes. Indeed, the corporal punishment of girls was sufficiently unusual for one such incident, documented elsewhere on this Forum, to land me here over 50 years later!