I want to believe this, but wrinkled paper wouldn't really account for that space difference. If this was done in MS WORD, it should really match exactly, unless someone did some deliberate formatting of certain letters or words to stretch or shrink them.
It would have to be deliberate. Like you said.
In MS Word, if you type 1st and don't space, you get the superscript. If you space you don't get the superscript.
However, you can highlight the "st", go to "fonts", and remove the superscript and it stays next to the 1.
1 st
1st
I experimented on my word program and I think found answer. If you use the letter l instead of the number 1, in word you get an exact sample of spacing that is in the orginal letter.
The problem with word is that as sson as you type the number 1 and the st after, it superscripts the st. To work around it, some people may have done different methods.