Voices -- Christine Collins, August 17, 1932

Comments

[Jim]

She responded in three hours and twenty-four minutes. Very fast for back then.

[Sam Flowers]

Telegrams were very short and to the point..Words cost money so nobody wanted to elborate. I remember my mother getting the telegram that my brother was killed while in the Navy. That is how things were then, nobody thought it was not the norm. Things do change, now you get the news in person.

[Richard H]

"Unable to claim body[.] Bury there."

I think the telegram Warden Court Smith sent to Christine Collins included the words crossed out in the copy published in this weblog. "at once" demands an immediate response. As someone else noted, she responded immediately. If she got the "edited" message, an immediate response wasn't necessary. "Bury there" would have been a direct response to "otherwise burial here."

A mystery to why those words were [somewhat poorly] iblacked out in the copy.

[Jim]

I don't think she got the edited message. The editied message must have been the prison's copy of what was sent and the items printed are probably exactly what was sent.