The URL is http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/menglish.html
Anyway, this has come up a number of times since I wrote that piece, and really, I’ve yet to see any conclusive evidence. In fact, the more I’ve dug, the more contradictions I’ve found. Was it one English guy, or a troupe, or a reference to English players in general? If it was one guy, was he English, or just named that, or both? And why, oh why, doesn’t anyone record this story at any time in the 1800’s? Sure, the OED records this story, but not - repeat, NOT - as an explanation of the term’s origin, merely as a cited quote, exemplifying the contemporary usage of the term.
The most notorious version of the story in question appeared in the Sunday Times, and mentions a gentleman who came here from across the pond and “impressed the Americans with a demonstration of the effect of ‘side’ on pool or billiard balls.” Nice, but, this article appears in 1959, some 90 years after the term has appeared in print. Worse, the incident is said to have taken place “during the latter part of the [19th] century”, and unless you typically refer to the 50’s as the latter part of the century, you’ve got to come to the conclusion that this is more a friend-of-a-friend story than a horse’s-mouth version. As you say, you gotta love the internet, but you also gotta hit the books, and the books don’t back this one up.
I will, however, withdraw the comment I made that “most other sources agree”; this comment is true only of the sources I hit before writing the column, while others I’ve looked at since then have advanced other theories, among them this one, and the notion that “English” was used to describe anything deceptive or sneaky, according to the custom of ascribing negative characteristics to one’s enemies or rivals. However, not one authoritative source will definitvely declare the above anecdote to be the true origin of the term, and until such time as someone can furnish a record of the story within, oh, 8 decades of when it is supposed to have happened, I can’t see any reason to give it any more credence than any other plausible but unsubstantiated piece of folk etymology.