The Perils of the Telegraph
A look at the chaotic and often hilarious errors produced by local telegraph operators.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Telegraphic blunders are the rule upstairs now, said a Brotherhood man to a reporter. In fact, there is scarcely a message sent out that is not bungled. Here are blunders which have been made by the 'plugs' upstairs: For 'Eclipse Base Ball Club' one of the men received 'E. G. Lippe B. B. Club.' Another one got a message reading, 'Ella has come. Spencer's menagerie.' This was addressed to a business man, and referred to a niece. He could not imagine what his niece was going to do with a menagerie. Judge his surprise when he learned that the message should have read, 'Ella has cerebro-spinal meningitis.' A wife received a message from her spouse, who was away, reading, 'I will be hog tomorrow.' This startling information caused her a great deal of uneasiness until she ascertained that it should have read, 'I will be home tomorrow.' This blunder was made by writing the telegraph letters 'm' and 'e' and making them 'g.' The word cooperative was received 'Cooper alive,' and 'Send me cheek for Dr. Patch' should have read, 'Send me check for dispatch.' The crowning bull was the following: The original dispatch read: 'The lumbermen in this section are skidding their logs preparatory to hauling them to their mills,' and when it had passed through the hands of one of the receiving operators it read: 'The lumbermen in this section are skinning their dogs preparatory to [hauling] them to their fits.'
“Judge his surprise when he learned that the message should have read, 'Ella has cerebro-spinal meningitis.'”
Long before the 'autocorrect' fails of the smartphone era, telegraph clerks were the human versions of predictive text engines. The 'dog skinning' blunder highlights how high-stakes communication was often rendered absurd by the limitations of technology and human error.
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