US Cover Help Identifying What Happened With This Cover

2 photos I know registered censored and returned. The dates on the censor does not match the rest of dates.

Hi Sandy. Which dates do you think are not matching?

Peter

The date on the censor tag says 1987 everything else 1942

The "1987" is the Censor Examiner number. I believe that this number was used at New Orleans. This number provides the Censorship Office with specific detail as to who examined the cover. The green "RETURNED.." label on the front implies that some form of improper message or enclosure was inside the envelope, and thus the entire letter returned to the sender. Since it was registered, and addressed to a foreign country (Danish West Indies I believe), it's likely that it was currency. A nice combination

Thank you I am new to this.

Also, the manuscript "2019" on the label next to the "1987" is the Examiner ID for a second censor, also at New Orleans. Accord to the official lists, all Examiner ID between 1955 and 2019 were based at New Orleans, LA).

While I am not fully conversant with the operational procedures, I suspect that this was a supervisor who had to make the final decision on returning the letter back to the sender. He also had to identify himself by adding his Examiner ID in manuscript.

Nice Cover.

Regards,
Stampalotapus

Probably to one of the British West Indies. Danish West Indies had been purchased by the US and become the US Virgin Islands by then, I think.

Or Dutch West Indies. Curacao?

I was thinking Dutch West Indies too, but could be British West Indies (starting with a large "B"). The Danish West Indies were purchased by the U.S. in 1917, so it's not that.

Robert

I can't believe there are all of these comments about the cover and no one apparently bothered to look up the addressee, L. Barrington Smith, in which Wiki explains it all!



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Barrington_Smith

After looking at cover better, I believe Jamaica BWI. The recipient of the letter which he never received was from Jamaica and I found info on Google about him. Thank you all for your help.