‘It is tempting to think of Benjamin Lay as an anachronism.’

Last year Benjamin Lay was ‘undisowned’ by Quakers. Simon Webb looks at the life of the anti-slavery pioneer.

by Simon Webb 8th March 2019

Some time around the year 1731, a Quaker called Sarah Lay went to visit her neighbour on Barbados. Sarah was shown into her neighbour’s kitchen, and couldn’t help noticing something hanging from a beam in the ceiling. It was not a side of ham or a brace of conies, but a man: a slave, strung up and standing in a pool of his own blood – he had been whipped. Naturally, Sarah asked what the man was doing there. She was told that he was a slave who had been caught trying to escape.