Patrick Minahan's confession
Amongst a folder of petitions by Catholics in the colony to Father John Joseph Therry is the last confession, seemingly written in Therry’s hand, of a convict called Patrick Minahan. The page is not dated, but a Patrick Minahan had been tried for the crime of a stabbing murder in Moulmein, British Burma in January 1838. He was transported to Tasmania on the Guillardon. After several attempts at absconding into the bush, Minahan was assigned to work in a chain gang at Port Arthur. In early 1841 a plot had been devised by members of the gang to escape, but this had been discovered by the authorities. Suspicion was cast on James Travis, one of the youngest members of the gang, for leaking the information. When the convicts were returning to the penitentiary after work, Minahan was seen to strike Travis on the head with a hammer. Travis died in hospital of head wounds and Minahan was tried and found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to death and his body ordered to be anatomised and dissected. The account of the trial in the Hobart Town Courier and Van Diemen’s Land Gazette of 11 June 1841 reported Minahan’s words after he was sentenced:
The prisoner in a loud voice exclaimed, as he swung himself out of the dock, 'Thanks be to God … You cannot dissect my soul, although you can my body!
Father Therry had been sent to Van Diemen’s Land as vicar-general in 1838 and took over some of Father Connolly’s duties after his death in 1839. Therry ministered primarily at St Joseph's, Hobart, and to the Port Arthur convicts. It is likely that he was called to hear Minahan’s last confession and wrote out the convict's last thoughts and regrets before he was executed.
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Confession of Patrick Minahan, John Joseph Therry Papers, MLMSS 1810/107, pp. 5-6.
Transcript
In the name of Our Lord Amen
I Patrick Minahan wishing to make as much atonement as may now be in my power for my transgressions of the Laws of My God, & the Country, acknowledge with most sincere heartfelt sorrow that I am guilty have committed the dreadful crime of murder for which I have been tried found guilty and that my trial has been a fair and impartial one, and my sentence justly merited, and I am also sincerely sorry for having during my trial denied my guilt and expressed disrespectful language to the Judge who presided at my trial but I am much more afflicted by the recollection I have frequently offended the Great Judge of the living and the Dead, at whose dread Tribunal I am now about to appear and Having however I trust a well founded confidence in the Mercy of my God through the merits of my Redeemer, who died for all Sinners, that my repentance even at the eleventh hour is not too late I feel much more desirous to die than I am to live, in the hope that this sort of death may contribute to expiate my offences. Had I and my fellows in misfortune had the opportunity I have enjoyed since my conviction of being instructed in the duties which I to my Creator and my fellow men I think I should never have seriously thought of committing of depriving any human being of that life which God alone can Give. I am nearly three years in the Colony and during the whole of that time I have had only one opportunity of attending a Catholic place of Worship, or of hearing instruction, except in the Prison from a Catholic Clergyman. I was frequently compelled to attend at Protestant Service but this compulsion which I thought unfair, encreased my prejudice against it, and prevented my deriving any benefit from it, My soul [indecipherable] for want [indecipherable] of instruction I lost the fear God like most men (from those in whom I could place confidence) in my situation and was on that account deterred from crime only by the fear of detection regardless of life under what I looked on as extreme punishment, I set no value on the life of another & therefore required but little provocation to deprive him of it.
Wishing to direct the few moments all the powers of my mind, for the short time that intervenes between this & eternity, earnestly to solicit pardon of my most Merciful God I shall now only say to my surviving brother in misfortune & crime that the evils of which some of them justly & others unreasonably complain, cannot be remedied either by [indecipherable] absconding, as I know by my own experience that it is always followed by a great increase of both crime & misery & very often by a violent or ignominious death.