Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 37 - S for Thomas Shillitoe

Thomas Shillitoe

Thomas Shillitoe was born in Holborn, London, in February 1754, the son of Richard  and Frances Shillitoe, both members of the established church. Richard was employed as librarian to Grays Inn but when Thomas was twelve his father moved the family to Islington where he took over the running of the Three Tuns public house. Here Thomas was exposed to much temptation and bad company but the venture failed and the family returned to Grays Inn.

Thomas was apprenticed to a grocer at the age of sixteen but his master drank and the business failed. Finding another sober master Thomas settled down and began to attend Friends' meetings, a move which enraged his father, and, when he adopted plain dress and plain speech, was not acceptable to his master either. Thomas left his situation and hoped to live with his parents but, as he reports, his father soon told him "he would rather follow me to my grave, than I should have gone amongst the Quakers; and he was determined I should quit his house that day week, and turn out and 'quack' amongst those I had joined myself in profession with."

Gracechurch Street Meeting

At the last moment Friends found Thomas a situation in a bank where most of the clerks were Quakers. He prospered as a Friend and became a member of Gracechurch Street meeting, but his faith still brought him to uncomfortable choices. Even though some Friends advised against it, he left his job at the bank because of his conscientious scruples about buying lottery tickets for clients and trained instead as a shoemaker and tailor. Although Thomas did well at his new trade his health was not good so in 1778 he left London and moved to Tottenham, then a country village, where he found a welcoming Quaker community and also a wife, Mary Pace.

Thomas Shillitoe was subject throughout his life to severe nervous depression and anxiety. His state of mind could be 'a pit of horrors'  and he says that he was twice confined to his bed from the sudden sight of a mouse. While crossing London Bridge he would run for fear that it would collapse under him. Sometimes, for weeks on end, he believed himself to be a teapot, living in dread of anyone coming near him in case they should break him.

Rural Tottenham in a 19th century painting

Although his health improved when he moved to Tottenham he still consulted doctors about his nervous complaints for another twenty years. These medical men prescribed a diet of beefsteak with a liberal supply of wine and ale at dinner and supper. When Thomas became worse they advised him to smoke and to take spirits and water but the only effect of this was to cause him to lose sleep on top of his other ailments. For this the doctors prescribed ten drops of laudanum a day which quickly became ineffective so they increased the dose little by little until  Thomas was taking 180 drops each night!

Unsurprisingly Thomas's health did not improve and he says, 'I went about day by day frighted by fear of being frighted - a dreadful situation indeed to be living in.' Eventually, around 1800, he decided to turn his back on the doctors, rely entirely on God's help, and give up all his stimulants at once as he had found that gradually changing things did not work. He became a total abstainer and also took no animal food except milk and eggs. His health improved, although he remained of a nervous disposition. He was known for walking everywhere very fast, which may have been a healthier way of releasing his nervous energy.

As his lifestyle changed and his health improved Thomas was able to retire from business in 1806 and
devote himself to his Quaker ministry. He became a tireless campaigner for temperance before many of his fellow Quakers took up the cause and in 1808 and 1811 visited Ireland where he preached against the evils of alcohol in hundreds of whiskey shops.

Drawing of Thomas Shillitoe 1830

He also travelled extensively in the ministry at home and abroad. In 1830 he visited the continent, going to the principal towns of Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland and France. In every place he visited he went first to the prison and then to the palace and was usually well received in both establishments.

Thomas  delivered several plain-spoken addresses to British monarchs and George IV never forgot his encounter with 'that little Quaker.' Thomas went with Peter Bedford to deliver an address asking for greater public morality to William IV and his Queen. He told the Friends to whom he submitted it for inspection, 'There must be no lowering it as with water, it must be all pure brandy' - an interesting choice of words for a temperance campaigner.

Thomas Shillitoe was described as being 'below the middle height, spare, active...as if made of wire and muscle.' In 1812 he left Tottenham to be near his children, living for some time in Barnsley, Yorkshire and then for eleven years in Hertfordshire. After his continental visits in 1821 and 1825 he went to America for three years from 1826 when he was over seventy. On his return he went back to Tottenham and remained very active, living near the meeting house and regularly attending meetings there until just before his death in 1836 at the age of 82.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 23 - L for Benjamin Lay

Benjamin Lay in America

Benjamin Lay was born in Colchester in Essex in 1683 to poor Quaker parents. There was no money for education and Benjamin was apprenticed to a glove maker but before he was eighteen he went to work on his brother's farm. When he came of age Benjamin decided to become a sailor, a surprising choice given his physical difficulties. He was only four feet seven inches (1.40 m) tall and was a hunchback, with a projecting chest and legs so slender that they seemed hardly able to bear his weight. However for the next seven years he went to sea and visited many parts of the world. He returned to England in 1710, moved to London and in 1718 married Sarah Smith of Deptford.

Benjamin was troublesome to Friends in London because of his practice of interrupting any ministry which he felt went beyond the guidance of God and used the minister's own words. When remonstrated with he said that he would prefer not to disturb meetings but had to be true to his own discernment. Eventually he was disowned in 1720. Benjamin took his wife back to Colchester and opened a shop, but he continued to disturb meetings and also other denominations' services. As he was already disowned Colchester Friends could do little but issued a public condemnation of him in 1723. Eventually Benjamin and Sarah left England for America in 1731.

They went first to Barbados where Benjamin obtained land and built a cottage. It was here that an incident occurred which made a great impression on Benjamin and which also illustrates the extremes of his character. One day Benjamin was furious to discover that a wild hog had got into his newly planted garden and uprooted everything. He killed the hog but then went further, dismembering it and nailing the pieces to his gate. Later, when his temper cooled, he was so stricken with remorse that he vowed never again to eat food or wear clothes that involved the death of any animal. He became a vegetarian and refused to wear leather.

John Woolman

Benjamin was horrified by the treatment of slaves in the island and his choice of food and clothing was further restricted by his refusal to use anything that was the product of slave labour. He grew flax and made his own clothes, refusing to wear cotton or to use indigo to dye cloth as both were produced by slaves. This practice was later followed by other Friends including John Woolman who were called 'White Quakers' because of their appearance. Benjamin spoke out against the slave owners and made himself so unpopular that he was soon on the move again, this time to Philadelphia. He had thought to escpe from slave owners there but was disappointed to find the practice widespread even among Friends. Benjamin built a house in the country where he grew vegetables and kept bees and devoted himself to campaigning against slavery and for other causes such as temperance and penal reform. As Benjamin's wife was in poor health the couple moved from their own house to stay with a Friend living near Abington Meeting. Here Benjamin built a 'grotto' in which he kept his library. Sarah died in 1735 but Benjamin continued his campaigning although his direct, dramatic methods made him very unpopular among Friends.

In 1738 during a Yearly Meeting session in Burlington, New Jersey, Benjamin entered dressed in a long white overcoat with a large book under his arm. He exclaimed against the hypocrisy of Quaker slave owners saying that they 'might as well throw off the plain coat as I do.' At this he took off his overcoat and revealed himself dressed in a bright military coat with a sword at his side. Saying that owning a slave was like thrusting a sword through his heart, 'as I do this book', Benjamin drew his weapon and plunged it into the book, piercing a bladder full of red poke-berry juice which he had concealed within its hollowed-out centre. People next to him were splashed with the scarlet liquid and several women fainted.

This disturbance proved the last straw for Philadelphia Friends. They had already been offended in the previous year by Benjamin's publication, without going through the proper channels to gain the Yearly Meeting's approval, of his book All Slave-Keepers That keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates... The book, printed by Benjamin's friend and namesake Benjamin Franklin, made many accusations against individual Friends and the Society as a whole for being complicit in the slave system. The Yearly Meeting was so displeased that they put advertisements in various newspapers distancing themselves from Benjamin's book and his views. In 1738 they went a step further and formally disowned him, claiming that he had never truly been a Friend and that he had obtained a travelling minute from Colchester under irregular circumstances.

Benjamin Franklin

Of course Benjamin took no notice and continued to consider himself a Quaker, He also continued to make dramatic gestures. Once he stood outside a meeting house in the snow without a coat and in bare feet to remind Friends of the hardship experienced by slaves. Eventually his campaigning, together with the more moderate stand taken by John Woolman and Benjamin Franklin among others, had an effect and the tide of public opinion turned against slavery. Not long before he died Pennsylvania decided to disown slave-holding Quakers. When Benjamin heard the news he rose from his chair and gave thanks to God adding, 'I can now die in peace.'

Eccentric to the last Benjamin wanted to be cremated and offered a friend £100 if he would burn his body and throw the ashes into the sea. But his friend refused, recoiling in horror at such an unheard-of request. So when he died, on 3 April 1759 at the age of seventy-six, Benjamin Lay was buried at Abington, Pennsylvania. Today we may associate the struggle against slavery with the name of Woolman rather than Lay but Benjamin's legacy continued to inspire the movement for generations and throughout the first half of the 19th century it was common for abolitionist Quakers to keep pictures of him in their homes.