A serious reply to the original post: the strap was mostly in modern times applied to the hand (Newcastle, Manchester, Scotland). But there were a few places that applied it to the bottom, only for boys as far as I know. One was St Augustine’s RC school in Wythenshawe in the 1970s whose highly idiosyncratic regime is well documented on its old boys’ website. Another is Walsall, which because of its local leather industry had written into its LEA rules that only a strap and not a cane may be used, but with the unusual detail that girls got it on their hands but boys got it on their bottoms. There is some evidence that Gateshead made a similar distinction.
The Use of the Tawse4
