I have frequently heard tops complain that spanking makes them tired, hurts their shoulders and bruises their palms. All I can usually say to that is, “Cry me a river”. Not that I actually say anything like that while in their reach, you understand.
It appears, injuring yourself while dispensing punishment is not unknown in history. I came across this account in “The Book Hunter” by John Hill Burton:
He had beheld, though he had never undergone, the old-fashioned process of flogging by heezing up the culprit on the back of the school-porter, so as to bring his bare back close to the master’s lash. The trembling victim, anticipating such punishment, used to be sent to summon the porter. He frequently returned with a half-sobbing message, Please, sir, he says he’s not in.” The fiction did not lead to escape.
Cromar was the name of the chief executioner in these scenes. Detested by his pupils, he was a victim to every sort of petty persecution from them, so that cruelty acted and reacted between him and them. On one memorable occasion he flogged John Burton with such violence as to cause to himself an internal rupture.
Oh, boo-hoo. I’m sure the schoolboys of old were full of sympathy.
By the way, I’ve never before heard “horsing” called “heezing up”. Have you? The events took place in Aberdeen in about 1820, so this may be very, very localised usage.