"English" in billiards

[George Thompson]

Folks:

I have received the following question from a writer for ESPN Magazine:

--For this article, "The Answer Guy," I'm trying to answer a question.   Sounds simple, but it never is. The question for this issue is: "Why is spin called 'english'?" You know, if you put a spin on a cueball and someone says, "That had a lot of english on it." Or tennis ball, or bowling ball, or even baseball. On down the line.
--I am looking for an answer, a suggestion, anecdotes, jokes, anything.

The best that the OED can do is 1869, from Mark Twain, and the entry doesn't include a definition.  The Dictionary of American English had also cited the Twain, and another passage (from the late 1880s as I recall) that included a definition; this defining quotation is omitted by OED.  HDAS doesn't give this sense at all.  And I don't see any other sense of the word "English" in OED that could be used to explain the billiards sense.

I have tried searching the Brooklyn Eagle database, but it seems to be malfunctioning.  A combination of NYTimes and Amer Periodicals through Proquest showed that there were distinct national forms of billiards.
"Nearly all the prominent nations of the world have their national game; and at ony of the prominent rooms on Broadway a spectator may possible witness the American, French, English, Russian and Mexican games, all being played at the same moment.  Of course the first is the game pursued in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred. . . .  The fact cannot be disputed, that no game calls for more scientific ability, both in judgment and execution, that the "Three ball Carambole," or French game, and it is equally certain that the English "winning and losing" game is among those requiring the least skill."  NYTimes, December 27, 1858, p. 5
Nothing is said in detail about "the English "winning and losing" game" and the way it was played, so I don't know whether it particularly called for "putting English on the ball".

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.