Benjamin Lay - Life and Beliefs

Life and Beliefs

Lay was born in Colchester, England. In 1710, he moved to Barbados as a merchant, but his abolition principles, fueled by his Quaker radicalism, became obnoxious to the people who lived there so he moved to Abington, Pennsylvania in the United States. 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, and drank only milk and water. 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. 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. 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. Dwelling in a cottage in the Pennsylvania countryside, Lay grew his own food and made his own clothes.