I went to a small boarding school for three years between the ages of eight and 11 in the early 1960s. In those days, corporal punishment was still very much part of the curriculum and to complain about it to parents was unthinkable, they signed the form and you had to accept your fate.
My first experience of corporal punishment was when I was ordered to the headmasters study for extra "tuition" after lunch in my first term. He told me that I was not doing as well as I could at my lessons and that I needed encouragement to spur me on. His "encouragement" meant having to go round to his side of the desk and take my shorts and pants down and lie across his lap for a vigorous and prolonged "smack bottom" (never called a spanking in those days). I remember crying and wriggling the first time, which resulted in me being called back the next day for a repeat punishment. I soon learned to be "stoic" as it was called and lie limply across his lap biting my lip to keep quiet as he smacked me slowly and deliberately until I was red raw. Afterwards, he wiped my bottom with a wet flannel to take away some of the sting, but it tingled and prickled for the rest of the day making me very restless whenever I sat on it.
These smack bottoms continued for the whole time I was at the school. I was not the only boy to receive them, there were several other boys who were regulars, but we never talked about it as we were told not to tell tales outside of the study.
Up until the age of 10, the standard punishment was the slipper. At my school it really was a slipper, not a gym shoe but a smooth leather soled slipper. For the slipper you waited outside the study until called in. A short lecture was given then it was "shorts and pants down and put your hands on your knees" and then you got the whacking, which was 3, 4 or 6 of the best for each offence. Often, several offences were committed so you could easily find yourself getting 12of the best. The slipper left ones bottom bright red for several hours, sometimes until the next day, much to the amusement of the other boys in the changing room or dorm.
Once I reached the age of 10, I was eligible for the cane. This was administered to the bare bottom for which I had to lie over the arm of a leather sofa in the headmasters rather lavish study. For a beating, I had to take my shorts and pants off, fold them neatly on the opposite arm and then lie over the arm of the sofa, arms and legs outstretched, head down. The cane itself was not large, I think it was no more than 2 foot in length but it had the classic curved handle and it was designed for one purpose only, the punishment of small boys. As yielded by my headmaster, the cane thwacked through the air and landed on my bare bottom to devastating effect going from numb to an excruciating sting in a matter of seconds and then the next stroke would land. If it was 3 or 4 of the best, the strokes would be spaced out across the bottom, but if it was six of the best or more (as it often was in my case) the cane would be administered diagonally across the bottom in one broad band with a couple of cuts to the lower part of the bottom. The unmistakeable red-blue stripes of a caning were normally visible for a couple of days.
A caning for doing something spectacularly naughty such as breaking a window was something to be proud of, meaning that ones marks were normally shown to a small group of boys in the toilets afterwards, particularly if there had been a group caning.
By the age of nine I found the prickling and hot bottomed aftermath of punishment rather appealing something I explored with another boy in a series of bare bottomed play spankings which normally led on to mutual masturbation at the end of our game and also after any genuine punishment in the confines of the school toilets.