The Eccentropedia: The Most Unusual People Who Have Ever Lived by Chris Mikul

Author:Chris Mikul [Mikul, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781909394018
Publisher: Headpress
Published: 2013-09-10T21:00:00+00:00

‘I sometimes think that I was born ten or twenty thousand years ahead of time.’

ALFRED W. LWSON

LAY, BENJAMIN

(1677-1759)

Abolitionist

Lay was a fabulous little bundle of moral indignation who liked nothing better than to make the lives of slave owners a misery. Born in England and a seaman in his youth, he first encountered slavery in Barbados, where he set up a shop with his wife, Sarah, around 1730. Lay and his wife, who were Quakers, were deeply affected by the conditions in which the slaves lived. He began to denounce slavery publicly, earning the enmity of the plantation owners. He and Sarah eventually decided to leave and moved to Philadelphia, where they were shocked to find many of their fellow Quakers were also slave owners.

Lay was a hunchback about four feet six inches (137 cm) tall. His arms were almost as long as his legs and he had a white beard that grew down to his waist. In Philadelphia, he lost no time denouncing the slave owners, and often turned up at Quaker meetings, sometimes wearing sackcloth. Ejected from one meeting, he lay at the front door so that the congregation had to step over him as they left. He invaded another meeting wearing a military uniform with a sword, and carrying a hollowed out book (to represent the Bible) in which was concealed a bladder containing pokeberry juice. Declaring that enslaving a man was no better than stabbing him through the heart, he drew the sword and plunged in into his ‘Bible’, spattering those nearest him with the red juice. He once sat outside a meeting in the middle of winter with one bare leg deep in the snow. When passersby expressed concern, he said, ‘You pretend compassion for me, but you do not feel for the poor slaves in your fields who go all winter half clad.’ He was not afraid of taking direct action, and once went so far as to kidnap a slave owner’s three-yearold child, so he would know how it felt to lose a loved one.

Lay wrote a number of antislavery tracts, some of which were printed by Benjamin Franklin. On receiving the manuscript for All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates, Franklin flicked through the pages and saw that they were unnumbered and in no order whatsoever. Lay told him to print them however he liked.

In addition to his stand against slavery, Lay was a strict vegetarian and a vociferous opponent of alcohol and tea. In emulation of Jesus, he once attempted to fast for forty days, but was persuaded to give up after twenty-one days by his wife and others. He made all his own clothes rather than risk wearing a product of slavery. He spent the last years of his life living in a cave.

Lay was on his deathbed when word came through that the Quakers had voted to reject slavery. ‘I can now die in peace,’ he cried, and did so shortly afterwards. The little man who had been

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