The English vice

I've had a look at a number of late French 19th century, early 20th century (1930s at the latest) novels, or collections of novellas, about spanking and whipping, and something intrigues me: quite often these claim to describe acts committed by English women (Miss Coot etc.), or even to have been written by English women. I have also seen that "vice anglais" (English vice) is short for a taste for corporal punishment.

I also recall that "capote anglaise" in French and "French letter" in English both designated condoms, so it seemed that each country associated the other with naughtiness.

So - were there similar alternate names for spanking etc. in other languages? Did the English attribute spanking to the French?

Those terms were mainly a device to get around censorship, both in fictionalized writing of erotica, but also for use in personal ads placed in newspapers or magazines.

People advertising for people interested in 'English art', ' French art' or 'Greek art' meant they were looking for someone willing to engage in spanking/punishment sexual activity, oral sex and anal/sodomy respectively. Terms like that were just code words to circumvent trouble with the vice squads and police snoops. People were also somewhat more reluctant to outright use words we think little of nowadays.

@agracier Believe me the books were explicit they discussed flagellation spanking etc What I noticed though is that they were often presented as academic treatises from physicians discussing a bizarre phenomenon across cultures and ages, or as collections of “facts” (things that supposedly had happened and the author had merely collected) as opposed to invented stories, or of found diaries.

It is of course a classical literary device that the author rhetorically denies he or she is the author and instead says he or she is just the editor of diaries or compiler of stories or facts

Also some flagellation books were written by men under female pen names. The novelist generally known as Pierre Mac Orlan wrote as Miss Sadie Blackeye

Notice however how not only he claimed to be a woman but also an English one!

Two books by Rosa Belinda Coote are accessible for free at the following link. One in English, the other in French. You can read them online or download them. I believe this is the author @Jacana referenced

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/51145

@Rigel Right. A pseudonym, obviously. Not even sure if it was translated from French to English or from English to French.