Benjamin Lay was an Anglo-AmericanQuaker humanitarian and abolitionist. He is best known for his early and strident anti-slavery activities which would culminate in dramatic protests. He was also an author, farmer, an early vegetarian, and distinguished by his early concern for the ethical treatment of animals. Born in England, into a farming family, his early trade was as a shepherd and glove-maker. After becoming a Quaker, he worked as a sailor, and in 1718 moved to Barbados. Here he witnessed the poor treatment of African slaves that instilled in him his lifelong abolitionist principles. Lay later settled in Philadelphia, and was made unpopular among his fellow Quakers by his strident anti-slavery stance, which would often culminate in acts of public protest. He published several pamphlets on social causes during his lifetime, and one book – All Slave-keepers that keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates.
Biography
Benjamin Lay was born in 1682 to Quaker parents in Copford, near Colchester, England. After working as a farmhand and shepherd, then an apprentice glove-maker, Lay ran away to London and became a sailor at age 21; he later returned to England and married Sarah Smith by 1718. In 1718, Lay moved to Barbados as a merchant, but soon his abolitionist principles, fueled by his Quaker radicalism, made him hugely unpopular with those fellow residents who broadly profited from slavery and human trafficking. In 1731, Lay emigrated to the British Pennsylvania colony, settling first in Philadelphia, and later in Abington. In Abington, he was one of the earliest and most zealous opponents of slavery, at a time when Quakers were not yet organized in opposition to slavery. Lay stood barely over four feet tall, referring to himself as "Little Benjamin". He was a hunchback with a projecting chest, and his arms were as long as his legs. He was a strict vegetarian; he ate only fruits, vegetables, and honey, and drank only milk and water. He did not believe that humans were superior to non-human animals and created his own clothes to boycott the slave-labor industry. He would not wear anything, nor eat anything, made from the loss of animal life or provided by any degree by slave labor. Refusing to participate in what he described in his tracts as a degraded, hypocritical, tyrannical, and even demonic society, Lay was committed to a lifestyle of almost complete self-sustenance after his beloved wife died. Dwelling in the Pennsylvania countryside in a cave with outside entryway attached, Lay kept goats, farmed notably with fruit trees, and spun the flax he grew into clothing for himself. He was distinguished less for his eccentricities than for his philanthropy. He published over 200 pamphlets, most of which were impassioned polemics against various social institutions of the time, particularly slavery, capital punishment, the prison system, the moneyed Pennsylvania Quaker elite, etc.
Abolitionism
He first began advocating for the abolition of slavery when, in Barbados, he saw an enslaved man commit suicide rather than be hit again by his owner. His passionate enmity of slavery was partially fueled by his Quaker beliefs. Lay made several dramatic demonstrations against the practice. He once stood outside a Quaker meeting in winter with no coat and at least one foot bare and in the snow. When passersby expressed concern for his health, he said that slaves were made to work outdoors in winter dressed as he was. On another occasion, he kidnapped the child of slaveholders temporarily, to show them how Africans felt when their relatives were sold overseas. The most notable act occurred in Burlington, New Jersey, at the 1738 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Quakers. Dressed as a soldier, he concluded a diatribe against slavery, quoting the Bible saying that all men should be equal under God, by plunging a sword into a Bible containing a bladder of blood-red pokeberry juice, which spattered over those nearby.
Death and legacy
Benjamin Lay died in Abington, Pennsylvania, in 1759. His legacy continued to inspire the abolitionist movement for generations; throughout the early and mid-19th century, it was common for abolitionist Quakers to keep pictures of Lay in their homes. Benjamin Lay was buried in Abington Friends Meeting's burial ground in a grave whose exact location is unknown, but next to the meeting house and adjacent to Abington Friends School in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. In 2012, during the brief Occupy Jenkintown encampment, protesters symbolically rechristened the Jenkintown Town Square as "Benjamin Lay Plaza". In 2018, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission erected an historical marker in Abington commemorating Lay. On April 21, 2018, Abington Friends Meeting unveiled a grave marker for Benjamin and Sarah Lay in its graveyard. Four Quaker meetings had disowned Lay for his inconvenient campaigning. In 2018, Southern East Anglia Area Meeting, part of Britain Yearly Meeting, became the last of the four to "undisown" him. The others were Abington Monthly Meeting and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in the USA and North London Area Meeting in Britain.
Publications
Lay's only published book is: This book was one of the earliest North American antislavery works. It was printed for Lay by Benjamin Franklin. It has been digitized by the Antislavery Literature Project.
