Readers living near graveyards, especially those adjacent to convents and monasteries, may have heard a rumbling sound at midnight as thousands of old teachers turned fiercely in their graves.
For as the clock struck twelve, it became a criminal offence for a teacher to strike a child. The deed was done through the medium of the little-known Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act which, according to the Department of Justice, removes teachers' traditional immunity against criminal prosecution for chastising a child.
The move is, essentially, symbolic. In 1982 a regulation banned corporal punishment in the schools. Any teacher breaking it could expect six of the best from the Department of Education.
Nevertheless, the symbolism of the move will be powerful for those who were educated when the cane and the leather reigned supreme in Irish schools.
The Christian Brothers were famed for their leathers which allowed for individual taste. Some had big leathers, some small. Some straps had a suppleness born of years of use.
Individual taste reigned in the use of leathers and canes.
One reader recalled a teacher who liked to have a few practice swings so that the unfortunate pupil did not know which would connect.
Another remembered a teacher who liked to hit children on the tips of the fingers with a cane. Very painful and requiring considerable practice.
A former resident of Artane industrial school recalled that a brother there used to store his leather in a freezer to keep it hard and hit children lengthwise along the hand and wrist with it.
But it was not all down to brothers and nuns.
Those educated in lay schools have also had their own tales of savagery to tell. Yet even in what are now portrayed as the grim days of the 1950s, there were a few Christian Brothers and a few Sisters of Mercy who never struck a child, and many who used corporal punishment in a restrained way.
The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children claimed yesterday that a small minority of children is still hit at school. It quoted a 1996 survey in which 4 per cent of children said teachers hit them when they were cross. The society also renewed its calls for a legal ban on corporal punishment in the home.