Benjamin Lay

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Benjamin Lay (1681–1760) was a philanthropist and abolitionist.

Lay was born in Colchester, England. In 1710 he moved to Barbados as a merchant, but his abolition principles became obnoxious to the people who lived there so he moved to Abington, Pennsylvania. In Abington, he was one of the earliest and most zealous opponents of slavery.

Lay was barely over four feet tall and wore clothes that he made himself. He was a hunchback with a projecting chest, and his arms were almost longer than his legs. He was a vegetarian. He would wear nothing, nor eat anything made from the loss of animal life or provided by any degree by slave labor. He was distinguished less for his eccentricities than for his philanthropy. One time Lay attempted to fast for forty days, but long before the end of forty days, his abstinence nearly proved fatal.

A Quaker and a passionate enemy of slavery, Lay made the lives of his slave-owning Colonial co-religionists a living nightmare with a constant stream of tracts, rants and stunts. He burst into one meeting of Philadelphia's Quaker leaders and plunged a sword into a hollowed out Bible filled with blood-red pokeberry juice, which he then sprayed in the shocked faces of the slave-owners.

Benjamin Lay died in Abington, Pennsylvania, in 1760.

[edit] References

• American National Biography, sub nomine