Thomas Thistlewood

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Thomas Thistlewood (16 March 1721 – 30 November 1786) was an English-born planter, diarist, and serial rapist who spent the majority of his life in the British colony of Jamaica. Born in Tupholme, Lincolnshire, Thistlewood migrated to the western end of Jamaica where he worked as a plantation overseer before acquiring ownership of several slave plantations. During his time in Jamaica, Thistlewood kept a diary in which he chronicled his life. Eventually spanning over 14,000 pages, the diary detailed the brutal physical and sexual abuse of the slaves he held authority over, first as an overseer then as a plantation owner. In 1751, Thistlewood started working as an overseer on a sugar plantation called "Egypt"; within days, he started to rape the enslaved women on the plantation. According to his diary, over the course of his life he committed thousands of acts of rape on 138 enslaved women. He systematically raped enslaved girls and women; those that ran away were whipped and put in chains, collars, or placed in field gangs. He sometimes raped more than one woman in a night, after which he would give them some coins "for their troubles". Two years later in 1753, Thistlewood received a runaway slave's severed head, and he placed it on a pole on the road near his home. Thistlewood also invented a form of torture called Derby's dose, which entailed flogging a slave, rubbing lime juice, salt pickle, and bird pepper on their wounds, and having a fellow slave defecate into their mouth. In 1767, Thistlewood purchased a 170-acre (69 ha) plantation called "Breadnut Island Pen"; by 1779, he had 215 enslaved people rearing livestock and growing provisions. All of his slaves were branded with his initials on their right shoulders. At Breadnut Island Pen, Thistlewood made attempts to "match" his...