Samuel Peyton, Convict, For Having On The Evening Of The King's Birth-Day
Broke Open An Officer's Marquee, With An
Intent to commit robbery,
of which he was fully convicted, had sentence of death passed on him
at the same
Time as Corbet; and on the following day they were both executed,
confessing the justness of their fate, and imploring the forgiveness of those
whom they had injured. Peyton, at the time of his suffering, was but twenty
years of age, the greatest part of which had been invariably passed in the
commission of crimes, that at length terminated in his ignominious end.
The following letter, written by a fellow convict to the sufferer's unhappy
mother, I shall make no apology for presenting to the reader; it affords
a melancholy proof, that not the ignorant and untaught only have provoked
the justice of their country to banish them to this remote region.
Sydney Cove, Port Jackson,
New South Wales, 24th June, 1788.
"My dear and honoured mother!
"With a heart oppressed by the keenest sense of anguish,
and too much agitated by the idea of my very melancholy
condition, to express my own sentiments, I have prevailed
on the goodness of a commiserating friend, to do me the
last sad office of acquainting you with the dreadful fate
that awaits me.
"My dear mother! with what agony of soul do I dedicate the
few last moments of my life, to bid you an eternal adieu!
my doom being irrevocably fixed, and ere this hour to-morrow
I shall have quitted this vale of wretchedness, to enter
into an unknown and endless eternity.
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