Costume party Protesters dressed as Native Americans empty the contents of crates of tea from an East India Company ship into Boston harbour in December 1773. Though the Boston Tea Party involved no bloodshed, it was preceded and followed by violence
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On a warm August evening in 1765, Thomas Hutchinson, lieutenant governor of the British colony of Massachusetts, sat down to supper in his mansion, one of the finest homes in the colonial city of Boston. As he prepared to eat, word reached Hutchinson that an angry mob was advancing. He swiftly “directed my children to fly to a secure place” and withdrew to a nearby house, “where I had been but a few minutes before the hellish crew fell upon my house with the rage of devils and in a moment with axes split down the door and entered”.
The horde tore apart Hutchinson’s mansion, from room panelling to roof tiles, drinking his wine and stealing silverware and money. By the following day, he wrote, “nothing remained but bare walls and floor”.