Benjamin Lay

English born writer and activist (1682–1759)

Benjamin Lay (January 26, 1682 – February 8, 1759) was an English born writer, farmer and activist. Born in Copford, Essex into a Quaker family, he initially underwent an apprenticeship as a glovemaker before running away to London and finding work as a sailor. In 1718, Lay moved to the British colony of Barbados, which operated on a plantation economy dependent on slave labour. While working as a merchant, his shock at the brutal treatment of slaves in Barbados led Lay to develop lifelong abolitionist principles, which were reinforced by his humanitarian ideals and Quaker beliefs. Lay subsequently moved to the Province of Pennsylvania in British North America, living in Philadelphia before settling in Abington with his wife Sarah Smith Lay, who was also a Quaker and shared his humanitarian and abolitionist beliefs. Operating a small farm which produced fruit, flax and wool, he refused to consume any product made from slave labour and lived a frugal, vegetarian lifestyle, which continued after Sarah died in 1735. A hunchback with a protruding chest, Lay was roughly four feet tall, and referred to himself as "Little Benjamin". Lay was also a prolific writer, writing several pamphlets and books which advocated for the abolition of slavery and animal rights. His 1737 book All Slave Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage: Apostates was one of the first abolitionist works published in the Thirteen Colonies. Lay developed a hostile relationship with American Quakers, many of whom owned slaves. He would frequently disrupt Quaker meetings with flamboyant demonstrations to protest against their involvement in slavery. Lay died in early 1759, and his anti slavery views would go on to inspire succesive American abolitionists.

Benjamin Lay was born in 1682 to Quaker parents in Copford, near Colchester, England. After working as a farmhand and shepherd, later as 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. Soon, his abolitionist principles, fueled by his Quaker radicalism, made him unpopular with those fellow residents who profited from slavery and human trafficking. In 1731, Lay emigrated to the Province of Pennsylvania, settling first in Philadelphia (in what is now the Olney neighborhood), 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 protruding chest, and his arms were as long as his legs. He was a 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. He 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 fruit trees, and spun the flax he grew into clothing for himself. Inside the cave he stowed his library: two hundred books of theology, biography, history, and poetry. 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.

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 wearing no coat and at least one foot bare and in the snow. When a passerby 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. 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.

Benjamin Franklin had printed Lay's book All Slave Keepers That keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates, a polemic against slavery, and sold it for two shillings a copy, twenty shillings a dozen. He regularly visited in Lay's later years, after Lay had become a hermit. Franklin then owned a slave by the name of Joseph and by 1750 he owned two more slaves, Peter and Jemima. Lay pressed him for his justification: "With What Right?" In April 1757, Franklin drafted his new will in which he promised Peter and Jemima that they would be freed after his death. On April 21, 2018, Abington Friends Meeting unveiled a grave marker for Benjamin and Sarah Lay in its graveyard. Four Quaker meetings 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 US and North London Area Meeting in Britain. The Benjamin Lay room at Friends House, London, UK is named after him. The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist is a book about Lay written by Marcus Rediker and published by Verso Books on September 1, 2017.