Slippering

[1] In the United Kingdom, especially in England and Wales, the slipper was a common implement for administering corporal punishment in schools for students of both genders and all ages.

A minority of schools also designated the slipper as their official punishment implement instead of the cane for more serious misbehaviour, especially infractions committed outside the classroom, such as smoking.

At that boys' grammar school in Cheshire slipperings were administered in the classroom in a solemn, formal atmosphere.

The punishment, which was extremely painful, was the standard response to a wide variety of disciplinary offences, including failing end-of-term tests.

The routine nature of such punishment is demonstrated by the frequency with which comics of the day (e.g., The Beano and The Dandy) showed scenes in which characters such as Dennis the Menace, Roger the Dodger, Minnie the Minx and Beryl the Peril were slippered by an irate parent.

Ishmael, a fictional character in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, recalled, in chapter four of the novel, begging his stepmother for the favor of receiving from her "a good slippering" for his misbehaviour.