Apology
A revised copy was printed for subscribers and for libraries which kept bound copies, but The Times wrote nothing more about the incident immediately. Sir Edward Walter Hamilton noted on 26 January that Sir William Harcourt had not received an apology, and wrote that "Harcourt will never hear the end of it" (although Hamilton regarded the story primarily as amusing). However an apology appeared in the issue for Friday 27 January 1882:
No pains have been spared by the management of this journal to discover the author of a gross outrage committed by the interpolation of a line in the speech of Sir William Harcourt … and it is hoped that the perpetrator of this outrage will be brought to punishment. —The Times, 27 January 1882Sir Edward Walter Hamilton noted that the effect of this paragraph was to draw "more attention than ever to the compositor's obscene line". The incident was reported by the Portuguese writer, journalist and diplomat Eça de Queiroz in an article which now forms part of his book Cartas de Inglaterra. Samuel Palmer, in compiling a quarterly index to The Times, included a reference:
Harcourt (Sir W.) at Burton on Trent, 23 j 7 c———Gross Line Maliciously Interpolated in a
Few Copies only of the Issue, 23 j 7 d — 27 j 9 f
Read more about this topic: Harcourt Interpolation
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