Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hi, John Dixon here with a sneaky Undeceptions single I couldn't resist recording. A remarkable event, though one that's hardly remarked upon, occurred on this day, 25 June 1788. The 21-year-old convict Samuel Payton entered into eternity.
firmly relying on the merits of a blessed redeemer, he said. Let me wind back a bit. At 15 years of age, Samuel Payton was sentenced to seven years' transportation for the theft, quote, of a piece of cloth. That's a frightening thought when I recall what I was getting up to at 15. Maybe that's for another Undeceptions pod episode.
Luckily, he was pardoned at the time. He was given just two years and then let out. He wouldn't be so lucky second time around. A couple of years later, Peyton was caught in possession of a stolen watch, which he claimed he won at a card game. The explanation didn't wash and he was sentenced to seven years transportation.
In May 1787, Samuel Payton was bound for Sydney with 774 other convicts, chained in the hull of the Alexander in what was called the First Fleet, the European beginnings of Australia. On arriving at Sydney Cove eight months later,
Peyton was set to work as a stonemason supporting the flurry of early colonial building activity, the hospital, the prison and of course the governor's house. Within five months the young Peyton was again in trouble. This time he was found in an officer's quarters trying to steal, so the report states, a shirt, stockings and a comb.
One gets the impression Samuel was more foolhardy than evil. Peyton was promptly tried and sentenced on Monday, June 23rd, 1788, and on Wednesday the 25th he was hanged on Sydney's public gallows, where the exclusive Harbourside Four Seasons Hotel now stands. He was just 21 years old.
Samuel Paton would be just another name in a convict log were it not for a letter he wrote to his mother with the assistance of an unnamed friend the night before his hanging. One of the First Fleet officers named Watkin Tench was so taken by the letter that he copied it out in his own journal which was later published.
Officer Tench was interested mainly in highlighting for his readership back in England that not the ignorant and untaught only, he writes, have provoked the justice of their country to banish them to this remote region. For me though, Payton's letter illustrates one of the most enduring legacies of Jesus Christ. From the 1st century to the 18th century and beyond,
People around the world have found in Christ a Saviour. Let me read from Samuel Payton's letter, The Night Before His Death. 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 tomorrow I shall have entered into an unknown and endless eternity.
I will not distress your tender maternal feelings by any long comment on the cause of my present misfortune. Let it therefore suffice to say that impelled by that strong propensity to evil which neither the virtuous precepts nor example of the best of parents could eradicate, I have at length fallen an unhappy though just victim to my own follies.
Too late I regret my inattention to your admonitions, and feel myself sensibly affected by the remembrance of the many anxious moments you have passed on my account. For these and all my other transgressions, however great, I supplicate the divine forgiveness, and encouraged by the promises of that Saviour who died for us all, I trust to receive that mercy in the world to come
which my offences have deprived me of in this; the affliction which this will cost you, I hope the Almighty will enable you to bear. Banish from your memory all my former indiscretions, and let the cheering hope of a happy meeting hereafter console you for my loss. Sincerely penitent for my sins, sensible of the justice of my conviction and sentence,
and firmly relying on the merits of a blessed Redeemer. I trust I shall yet experience that peace which the world cannot give. Commend my soul to divine mercy. I bid you an eternal farewell. Your unhappy dying son, Samuel Payton, Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, New South Wales, 24th June 1788. Payton's hanging on the 25th
is mentioned in several journals of the time. It was a cold, wet and squally June day. At 11:30am, the 21-year-old mounted the gallows and made what one witness describes as "an eloquent and well-directed speech in which he admitted his guilt and asked forgiveness from those he had wronged." He died penitent, says another witness.
Christians would say he died in the embrace of the Savior. Christianity has always declared that Jesus died for petty thieves like Samuel Payton, for neglectful materialists, for thankless atheists, for the morally self-righteous, and even for the smugly religious. For any who sincerely turn back to God. So the New Testament says Christ is the Savior
who died for us all.