Was sending drunk telegrams ever a thing?

by kitchensink108

I was talking to someone about how my grandpa proposed to my grandma via telegram. He ended the telegram with "I'm not drunk either." The person I was talking to mentioned drunk calls (etc) nowadays and if drunk telegramming was actually a thing that happened.

Of course there were probably scattered instances that nobody really remembers. But were there any notable instances of sending telegrams drunk? Or any commentary from the early 20th (or late 19th) century regarding it happening?

ivymikey

I think it's important to remember that nobody had the equipment to send a telegram in their homes. Drunk phone calls and drunk texts are possible because we can simply pick up the phone and dial or type it out, but a drunk telegram just isn't possible. A person could be drunk when giving the message to the telegraph operator, sure, but would the operator send a message that didn't make sense? Probably not. This article about some Civil War telegrams points out that the operators did their own editorializing. I've been trying to find an article I had read some years ago about Lincoln's assassination and the telegram that was sent to California to inform the press about it but I can't find it. The article compared the telegram and the subsequent article written from the information. The telegram contained the bare bones information and any typos or, in your question, drunken stupidity, would have rendered the telegram useless. Also, telegrams were charged by the word so again, a decent telegraph operator would probably discuss the contents with the drunk customer and give them advice on the best way to phrase their message. All this to say that even if someone showed up drunk, with the operator intermediary, their drunken message would have been heavily edited.

BaffledPlato

Here's an old thread you might be interested in: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2su41j/is_there_any_evidence_of_a_drunk_telegram_similar/

There are a couple of mentions in that thread.