My information indicates that Margaret was a member of the team that inspected the Rodney School after the national ban on corporal punishment in state schools in 1988, but long before the eventual ban on this type of punishment in private schools a decade or so later. Unfortunately, I am not in touch with this lady as the meeting was now some seven or eight years ago and it was merely the nature of the gathering which allowed me to legitimately bring up the subject.
I would also agree with comments about the endemic and prolific manner in which the cane and slipper were used in my time. Tom Scott’s book The Last Resort, gives away the lie in the title. We all knew that it was, without doubt, the first resort to be used by many teachers, whether this was out of idleness or a natural zeal for a beating.