[BITList] Australian in India

[HUGH]

Mike,

Tattoos used to be something like a rose/thistle/other with a scroll underneath saying Mary, Jean or some such, on a muscular forearm. My Dad had one, also my two brothers, though the latter pair didn't have a lady's name.  The nearest I ever got is a small black dot on the palm of my right hand, where pen stuck in years ago. Now it's Hindu gods on the only available spaces.

India is where we were not that long ago.

On the 8th of January, 1697, Thomas Aikenhead, a 20 year old student, was hanged in Edinburgh for "blasphemy", basically holding views contrary to those held by the Church of Scotland and other churches in the matter of religion.  He could have been me.

>From a website:

< Aikenhead petitioned the Privy Council to consider his "deplorable circumstances and tender years." Also, he had forgotten to mention that he was also a first time offender. Two ministers and two Privy Councillors pleaded on his behalf, but to no avail. On 7 January, after another petition, the Privy Council ruled that they would not grant a reprieve unless the church interceded for him. The Church of Scotland's General Assembly, sitting in Edinburgh at the time, urged "vigorous execution" to curb "the abounding of impiety and profanity in this land". Thus Aikenhead's sentence was confirmed.



Thomas Babington Macaulay (Lord Macauley) said of Aikenhead's death that "the preachers who were the poor boy's murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and ... insulted heaven with prayers more blasphemous than anything he had uttered."

Aikenhead was the last person hanged for blasphemy in Britain.>

Hugh.




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