Collector's Item!

[Dave Hughes]

This excerpt is taken from an article on the BBC website introducing a new newspaper archive which has been put online by the British Library.

The full article can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8104099.stm

I found this bit very interesting!

The new website would have helped him research his own book, he said, which was compiled entirely from his own collection of 1,000 old papers.

Among them is a first edition of The Times from 23 March 1882 - the jewel in the crown.

On page seven, halfway through a reported speech by the then Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt, are the words "the speaker then said he felt inclined for a bit of sex" - although the word for sex was far more graphic.

Nobody spotted it until several of the first editions had been dispatched, and within hours they were changing hands for 50-times their face value, at 12 shillings and six pence.

The highly mischievous compositor, perhaps bored by poring over the 10,000 word speech, was never revealed.

Mr Clarke says 15 years ago they fetched £100 at auction.