FOLLOWING the correspondence about sadistic teachers and the cane, dare I suggest that the correspondents might have had even more grievous cause for complaint if they had belonged to a slightly earlier generation?

I refer to an art teacher at the secondary school I attended. He did not use the weighted leather instrument supplied to all the teachers for the purpose of assaulting pupils.

No, he improvised – he used part of a chair: specifically one of the rungs that go between the legs of a large, old-fashioned wooden chair.

You had to bend over, and he would then pull your jacket up and delivery four heavy blows with this object upon your unprotected backside.

The pain, let me assure you, was excruciating. It went right through you and for the moment even eclipsed the humiliation. That sort of thing was par for the course at that school.

Tony Kelly, Crook