Interesting bit on the origin of the Tea Party name in an interview Peter Filichia did with playwrite Ian Kelly:
IK: I’m writing a biography of Samuel Foote, the British one-legged comedy superstar of the 18th century. He’s not well-known over here. I came across his story while researching Casanova, who knew him. The irony is that Lee got interested in him without any input from me, and is now writing a play about him, too. We often run into each other in the book stacks in the London Public Library. We’ve discovered that Foote was arrested in 1776 for buggery and his trial became such a sensation that London paid too much attention to it and not enough to the American Declaration of Independence.
PF: You mean we somewhat owe this man for our independence -- and one of our best musicals?
IK: There’s more. At the Haymarket he would do political comedy shows and serve tea. They became known as tea parties – and the expression became so famous that that’s why that incident in Boston Harbor in 1773 became known as the Tea Party. All thanks to a man whom many considered a sexual deviant.
