The internet is rich with people sharing memories about times they were given corporal punishment at home or school while they were growing up. Unfortunately, the ones that us spankos are most likely to come across are very often just fantasies of the writer. However, Facebook comes in very handy as a source for more credible accounts. Choose almost any town or city and there will be a Facebook group called "Memories of XXX" or "History of XXX" or something like that. A lot of them are public or can be joined very easily with no questions asked.
Then, every so often, someone will post a recollection of getting punished at school and usually dozens of others chip in with their own personal tales, Given that these groups are drawing on a general population there are probably a high percentage of genuine recollections and they are less likely to be made up. In many cases, some of the writer's former classmates post further information about the incident or other instances of punishment from the same teacher. In English schools it is quite clear that, in most cases, the cane was in use for quite a period of time. But it also clear that the slipper was used quite often as well, and in a significant number of cases schools appeared to have followed the practice of using the cane for the boys and the slipper for the girls. That's not to say the slipper wasn't sometimes used on boys as well but it perhaps implied that the slipper was a less severe implement.
I find it quite fascinating for a number of reasons. For one, it is probably one of the noisiest implements to use - the sound alone would be quite scary for others who might be deterred from emulating the behaviour that has brought the punishment to a brother, sister or fellow pupil. Also, of course, in both home and school settings the "slipper" could be just there for purely innocuous reasons, unlike a cane, tawse or paddle that is blatantly there for one purpose and one alone. The reason I put the word slipper in inverted commas is that, in a school setting at least, it would be very unusual (but not unheard of) for the implement to actually be a slipper.
In a home setting, it might well be a conventional slipper. These often had soft material for the soles and while they might sting a bit, they were unlikely to cause any great hurt. The advantages they offered over just using the hand would be that they were probably noisier and also saved the spanker from having to endure getting a sore hand, so opening the way for longer spankings - however light a spanking, if it goes on long enough it starts to hurt. The softer slipper could also be more easily wielded by someone who had quite a small hand. Finally, moving on from "just" a hand spanking to the use of an implement could, of itself, imply an escalation.
As time has gone on, the nature of items worn as a slipper has changed - not that the soft and fluffy sort have gone away, but quite a lot nowadays have a thin but relatively stiff plastic sole quite capable of producing a fairly significant sting. I even read an account a long time ago of someone being punished with the sole of a Dr Scholl exercise sandal.
If that was one of the traditional style of exercise sandals with a wooden sole (or even the faux wood in the one shown here), that would take things to a whole different level - that could really hurt, even through clothing.
In schools, as I've said, although pretty well everyone referred to such punishments as "slippering", it was very rare for a slipper to be the chosen implement. It would most commonly be the footwear that was worn, typically, for PE classes. These were variously known as gymshoes, plimsolls, sandshoes, dabs (and probably a myriad of other names as per local custom).
They would have a canvas top and a rubber sole - usually with some sort of wavy pattern on it.
They could be either lace-up or elasticated - the elasticated ones tended to aimed at younger children and were therefore usually smaller. In cases where a teacher just took one that was lying around to chastise an errant pupil, they would probably take care to ensure the laces in the former were tucked out of the way. Some teachers kept a gymshoe handy, in their desk perhaps, in which case laces were often removed. In the mythology of schools, it was generally implied that the larger the gymshoe, the more it would hurt (although this may not be strictly correct) so kids would be especially in awe of a teacher who carried an old size 12 gymshoe, for example. If it had a particularly worn sole, the assumption was that it had come down hard on a lot of bottoms, although, of course, the reality was probably that the wear came from previous use.
The Facebook accounts do suggest it was used a lot on girls which is, to me in any case, very interesting. When you read such memories about school canings - of either gender - it transpires that the cane was often used on the palm of the hand. In the case of girls, it would almost always be on the palm of the hand. With a slippering, it would almost always be applied to the bottom, so accounts of girls getting the slipper would almost certainly have involved them having a sore behind.
I really love this image of Pandora Blake from her Dreams of Spanking website of her getting a slippering across a very tight and short skirt. That is probably a pretty accurate representation of what must have happened on quite a lot of occasions.
This one of Belinda Lawson from Firm Hand Spanking also also has a good degree of realism - the only issue is that as she is wearing trousers. There was a fairly narrow window of time between having some schools beginning to allow girls to wear trousers to the time corporal punishment was abolished across UK schools.
This one from Institute of Discipline also scores quite well on the realism scale as it appears to be taking place in the context of a PE class - in my experience PE teachers had a reputation for a bit of a sadistic streak and also had the advantage of having access to a ready supply of gymshoes that have been lost or abandoned over the years
However, this image from Institute of Discipline does show one problem - the relatively rigid structure of the gymshoe might have been a bit unwieldy for a small female hand to get a good grip on.
Another one from Firm Hand Spanking, this time with Rhianna Parsons (aka Danielle Hunt) on the receiving end is probably how many might hope a school slippering might be administered with the skirt turned back. This was probably very rare in real life.
In a home setting it may well have been used with the skirt turned back or even, as in this case from Real Spankings (AEG) with the lovely Riley, on the bare bottom. Interestingly in this case the spanker is holding the gymshoe by the main body and striking Riley's bottom with the heel - although this was probably rather unusual, it would have hurt more because there was much less flexibility in the heel.
This image from Xerotic's Spanked Schoolgirl site shows the more conventional hold on a gymshoe (although the laces have not been safely tucked out of the way) but a bare bottom slippering like this almost certainly never happened in schools except in fantasy.
Any teacher getting a girl to bend over and pulling down her knickers to wallop her with a gymshoe like we see here would almost certainly have found his career cut short.
I attended school in an era when corporal punishment was in use and I suppose when I was between the age of ten and fourteen I would have seen the gymshoe used on a number of occasions and a few memories stand out (sorry to disappoint, but I have to say in advanced that at that stage I was in an all-boys school environment).
Firstly, it was almost always in public - often in front of the class with the naughty lad called to the front, told to bend over, and then given a single whack. I did also witness, on at least a couple of occasions, pupils made to report to a teacher at lunchtime or break time and having to bend over in a corridor to be whacked in front of anyone who happened to be passing - I would assume in those cases the teacher didn't have access to the right equipment during the class but a supply of gymshoes was probably available in the staff room.
We also had our fair share of slipper-happy PE teachers. Often they carried a gymshoe to encourage you to put in a bit more effort by aiming a passing whack at the seat of your shorts as the opportunity arose. I hated PE and the liberal use of the slipper didn't change my mindset one bit. I can remember very clearly one time we were supposed to vaulting over a gym-horse. Quite a few of us were pretending to just mistime our take off and fail to go over the horse, so he took up position at the side and if you didn't go over you got a whack straight away. To be fair, he wasn't hitting hard - it barely tingled, but I copped a few that day.
I also remember one time a teacher called someone out to the front for some hideous crime but the teacher didn't have a gymshoe with him so he asked the class if anyone could help out. To say there was an unseemly scramble to offer him assistance would be an understatement. It was a friend of mine who got out there first with one of his gymshoes. The reprobate who was to be spanked was made to touch his toes, the teacher delivered one hard and satisfyingly loud whack across the trousers tightly stretched over his bottom, then the gymshoe was returned and everyone went back to their seats. The one who had been whacked managed to be quite stoical (as was generally expected).
After the class my friend was clearly excited by the part he'd played and was keen to tell me what had actually happened. It turned out he didn't have a conventional gymshoe like most of us were still using but one of the new "training shoes" that were just coming in. Some of you may recall that in the very early days these had a very hard polyurethane type sole and my friend was positively gleeful in showing me and saying how that must have really hurt.I think, in practice, one of the things that interests me most about this type of slippering is that it could appear very much the same to the assembled audience but the teacher could vary considerably the force he was using and the extent of the follow-through - so two pupils could get whacked apparently the same and one - perhaps the more habitual troublemaker - could get hurt a lot more.
In almost all cases that I saw (although this does not appear to have been the case in many schools if Facebook postings are to be believed) such punishments were almost always just a single whack. There was one occasion I remember when a serial offender, who had in fact been caned by the headmaster just a couple of weeks earlier, was brought out to the from of class for some perceived offence - as usual he was told to touch his toes and the teacher gave him, not one, but two hard whacks of the slipper. The boy immediately started crying. Very interesting - he'd come across as having been very unconcerned by the caning he'd experienced in the privacy of the head's office but was now crying at a "mere" slippering. Was he taken by surprise by getting two rather than the usual one, or did the teacher really lay it on with more than usual force. Or did he cry when he got caned as well but managed to avoid anyone finding out?
Classroom slipperings, in my experience, were very much the unofficial punishments - they would not have been recorded anywhere. They seemed to have an extensive range - I saw boys changing for PE or swimming classes an hour or so after having been slippered and their bottom's were barely marked. I saw others with dark bruises a day later.