William A. Spooner? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: I love spoonerisms, humorous phrases in which the initial sounds or letters of words are swapped. According to a popular anecdote William A. Spooner who was the Warden of New College, Oxford was late to church services one day and found that a woman was sitting in his customary pew. He addressed her with the following garbled words:
Pardon me, madam, you are occupewing my pie.
Spooner was attempting to say:
Pardon me, madam, you are occupying my pew.
Apparently, a large number of spoonerisms were really constructed by clever students and other humorists. Would you please explore whether this phrase was really spoken by Spooner.
Reply from Quote Investigator: Reverend William A. Spooner lived from 1844 to 1930. The earliest evidence of this spoonerism located by QI appeared in an article dated April 9, 1887 titled “Word-Twisting Versus Nonsense” in “The Spectator” of London. Multiple examples of playfully altered expressions were presented. Boldface has been added to excerpts:1
With the transposition of initial letters, a new field of solecism is opened up, in which a living cleric, in other respects intelligent and accomplished, works with an involuntary assiduity that is most upsetting to his hearers. “My brethren,” so ran one of his most startling announcements, “we all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish [i.e., half-formed wish] in our hearts.”
With him, however, the mischief goes further, extending to the mutual entanglement of words which is terrible to contemplate. He has been known to speak of “Kinquering congs,” and on one occasion, ever memorable to his interlocutor, addressing himself to a gentleman who had intruded upon his seat in church, he politely remarked,—“Pardon me, Sir, but I think you are occupewing my pie.”
In the initial instances of the story, a man was occupying the pew and not a woman. “The Spectator” article did not print William A. Spooner’s name, but the full context left no doubt as to the identity of the “living cleric”. Also, many later articles ascribed the phrases directly to Spooner. Nevertheless, the evidence was weak. QI and most researchers believe that almost all spoonerisms attributed to Spooner were never actually said by him. The phrases were not uttered spontaneously they were deliberately constructed to elicit laughter.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Continue reading “Origin of Spoonerism: You Are Occupewing My Pie”