Spurious Letter From "Brigham Young

United States, 20th cent. Very good. Light toning, water staining, letter folds. A couple minor short tears.. So bad, it's good: a spurious letter purporting to be from Brigham Young "To the Judge" written in pencil on late 19th century lined paper in an early- to-mid-twentieth-century hand, with the following errors: Young's birth date (he was born in 1801, not 1832); date of writing (Young died in 1877, long before this letter's date of 1899); the paper (watermarked "Connecticut Valley", despite the claim it originated in Los Angeles); and, of course, the fact that Brigham Young was never imprisoned in Los Angeles county for 35 years. The content of the letter details the abuse the prisoner has endured there and, for the last five years, inmate of an insane asylum. More than once, the prisoner references his inability to speak/his muteness, and closes the letter by stating that "a fellow prisoner has copied this for me".

Single lined notepaper leaf (11" by 8.5"). While we hold that this is probably an egregiously terrible and ill-researched forgery, we concede that there is a possibility (albeit a very unlikely one) that this letter is a legitimate copy of a Los Angeles prisoner's letter to a judge in 1899, who was going by the alias "Brigham Young" at the time. We will not, however, hold our breath.