IN a recent column in which I talked about some of the things Colchester did first, or bigger or better than anyone else, I briefly mentioned Benjamin Lay, one of the town’s greatest sons.

Who the heck is this chap, you might ask? And well you might because he has become quite undeservedly forgotten, at least here in his home town.

It is a pretty safe bet that for every 1,000 people who know of William Wilberforce, no more than the odd one might have heard of Benjamin Lay.

In many ways this is understandable enough, but if anyone deserves to be remembered as one of Colchester’s greatest sons, it is this gloriously improbable and largely forgotten Quaker who became one of the greatest figures in the world in the abolition of the slave trade.

He was born in Copford in 1682 to Quaker parents.

He was a hunchback with a projecting chest; his arms were as long as his legs and his legs so spindly that they could barely support his weight.

He was a strict vegetarian; he ate only fruit, vegetables and honey and drank only milk and water.

He did not believe that humans were superior to non-human animals and created his own clothes to boycott the slave-labour industry.

He would not wear anything, nor eat anything, made from the loss of animal life or provided by any degree by slave labour.

To cut a very long and really entertaining story short, he made such a nuisance of himself, being quick in tongue and harsh in criticism of the other members for their unfair commercial dealings and power-seeking, that he was thrown out of the Quakers (and that takes some doing, let me tell you).

So he went to sea for ten years as a common sailor. Goodness only knows how he fared.

Then, improbably, he found a wife, Sarah Smith, as small and deformed as he was, and pitched up in Barbados, where he planned to open a general store.

However, what he saw there horrified him: Everywhere he looked he saw slaves starved, beaten and tortured to death and he was horrified.

He kicked up such a fuss there that he was forced to leave, where he turned up in the newly-founded Philadelphia.

Here he discovered the Quakers were the biggest slave owners of all. They soon followed the example of Colchester and ejected him.

In Pennsylvania, a state founded by and run by the Quakers, that meant virtual exclusion from society.

However, he met and befriended someone incredibly important – Benjamin Franklin, a future founding father of the USA, who would publish Lay’s book, All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates. Catchy title.

After the death of his wife, Lay went to live in a simple cave, with a roof of evergreen and an extensive library.

Lay’s favourite meal was “turnips boiled and afterwards roasted”, while his drink of choice was “pure water”.

He made his own clothes from flax to avoid the exploitation of animals. He would not even use the wool of sheep.

In 1758, the year before Lay died, aged 77, the Philadelphia Quakers ruled they must no longer take part in the slave trade.

The Quakers would go on to be at the forefront of the campaign against slavery, which would ultimately be abolished in the US in 1865.

Lay was buried in an unmarked grave next to his wife.

Weirdly, considering he eschewed worldly goods, he left 40lbs of whalebone and 12,000 pins. Equally curiously, before he left for America, he had donated £218.6s - a huge sum - to Colchester Quakers in trust for the poor of Colchester. That trust can’t be traced today and was probably rolled up in the 60s.

Let us not forget his local beginnings.

Let us have a proper plaque or, better still, two plaques - one here at the site of the Quaker meeting house he attended in St Helens Lane and another in Abbington, USA, where he is buried. And a book and a film. And a statue to go alongside John Ball, our other great social reformer.

Well I have never been accused of thinking small…

Here’s to him. Raise a glass of pure water to Benjamin Lay. One of Colchester’s greatest sons!