Thomas Thistlewood

Thomas Thistlewood (16 March 1721 – 30 November 1786) was an English-born slave-owner, serial rapist, planter and diarist 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 over several slave plantations. During his time in Jamaica, Thistlewood kept a diary in which he chronicled the many crimes he committed against the people he enslaved. Eventually spanning over 14,000 pages, the diary detailed the brutal mistreatment 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 Thistlewood's life he committed 3,582 acts of rape with 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 on their wounds, and having a fellow slave defecate into their mouth. In 1767, Thistlewood purchased a 160-acre plantation called "Breadnut Island Pen"; by 1779, he had 32 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 male and female slaves; despite this he continued to rape the women. By 1781, Thistlewood was becoming regularly ill with syphilis and his sexual abuse declined as a result.

For most of the 1780s, Thistlewood's slaves suffered from malnutrition due to intentional mistreatment. If any enslaved person was caught eating the plantation's produce, they were brutally flogged. While his slaves complained of hunger and starvation, Thistlewood continuously entertained guests with lavish meals. He never married but he had a long term partner, an enslaved woman called Phibbah, with whom he had a son. In 1784, he became so ill that he had difficulty writing in his diary, and died at Breadnut Island Pen in November 1786. In his will he left £3,000 (equivalent to £490,262 in 2023) and 34 slaves. Thistlewood's treatment of his enslaved workers did not attract criticism from Jamaica's slavocracy, as this was typical of the conditions faced by Jamaican slaves.^[1] His diary remains an important historical document chronicling the history of Jamaica during the 18th century.