25 Facts About Benjamin Lay

Benjamin Lay was an English-born writer, farmer and activist.

In 1718, Lay moved to the British colony of Barbados, which operated a plantation economy dependent on slave labour.

Benjamin Lay subsequently moved to the Province of Pennsylvania, living in Philadelphia before settling in Abington with his wife, Sarah Smith Benjamin Lay, who was a Quaker and shared his humanitarian and abolitionist beliefs.

Benjamin Lay was a prolific writer, writing books and pamphlets that advocated the abolition of slavery.

Benjamin Lay developed a hostile relationship with American Quakers, many of whom owned slaves, frequently disrupting their meetings with demonstrations to protest against slavery.

Benjamin Lay died in early 1759, and his anti-slavery views would go on to inspire successive American abolitionists.

Benjamin Lay was born in 1682 to Quaker parents in Copford, near Colchester, England.

Benjamin Lay later returned to England and had married Sarah Smith by 1718.

In 1731 Benjamin Lay emigrated to the Province of Pennsylvania, settling first in Philadelphia, and later in Abington.

On one occasion Benjamin Lay carried an animal bladder filled with red pokeberry juice under his coat in order to stage a protest.

Benjamin Lay was a hunchback with a protruding chest, and his arms were as long as his legs.

Benjamin Lay became a vegetarian after killing a groundhog that had ravaged his garden.

Benjamin Lay had nailed its body parts to the corners of his garden.

Benjamin Lay felt remorse over the incident and after reading the works of Thomas Tryon declared himself a vegetarian and recommended a quiet, rural life based on "harmony and unity" with the world.

Benjamin Lay came to view a divine pantheistic presence of God in all living things; he opposed the death penalty in all instances.

Benjamin Lay planted apple, peach and walnut trees and managed a large apiary.

Benjamin Lay created his own clothes to boycott all commodities produced by the exploitation of others, including animals.

Benjamin Lay refused to use the wool of sheep and wore only flax-made garments.

Benjamin Lay published more than 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.

Benjamin Lay 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.

Benjamin Lay once stood outside a Quaker meeting in winter wearing no coat and at least one foot bare and in the snow.

Benjamin Lay regularly visited in Lay's later years, after Lay had become a hermit.

Benjamin Lay's 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.

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.