Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Thomas Thistlewood: Slave Plantation Owner and Diarist

November 13, 2025

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  • Thomas Thistlewood rationalized his horrific sexual violence and cruelty by framing his diary entries as contributions to the scientific record and equating his actions with the taming of the natural world, similar to managing livestock. 
  • A satirical 1752 tract, *The Man Plant*, which proposed eugenics and raising humans like farm animals, was taken seriously by Thistlewood and influenced his dehumanizing worldview regarding breeding and control. 
  • The casual, habitual nature of extreme sadism, including 'pickling' victims in spices and salt, and forcing enslaved people to ingest feces ('Derby's Dose'), was normalized among white colonists in Jamaica, indicating a systemic moral collapse rather than isolated villainy. 
  • The intellectual curiosity of enslaved individuals, such as the girl Bess interacting with scientific texts, was brutally suppressed by the systemic violence and sexual abuse inflicted by slave owners like Thomas Thistlewood. 
  • Thomas Thistlewood's detailed, coded documentation of sexual exploitation aligns with a broader pattern among 18th-century elite male diarists (like Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and William Byrd) who used linguistic concealment to manage and control their documented abuses. 
  • Sexual opportunity, evidenced by Thistlewood's dramatic increase in sexual encounters after becoming a slave owner, was a significant, though often justified away, motivator for his participation in the slave system, resulting in approximately 3,852 recorded sexual acts with 138 women, most of whom were enslaved. 

Segments

Podcast Introduction and Guest Banter
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(00:00:01)
  • Key Takeaway: The hosts opened the episode by joking about automated recording prompts and the movie WALL-E before introducing the episode’s subject.
  • Summary: The opening featured light banter about technology replacing human jobs, specifically referencing the ‘Zoom lady’ voice prompt. The hosts briefly debated the character WALL-E from the Pixar film. Robert Evans then formally introduced the podcast, Behind the Bastards, and welcomed the guest to discuss the hated historical figure.
Thistlewood’s Self-Perception and Slave Treatment
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(00:05:30)
  • Key Takeaway: Thomas Thistlewood viewed his documentation of sexual violence as a scientific contribution, treating enslaved people as valuable livestock rather than fully human.
  • Summary: Thistlewood considered his documentation of his crimes, including sexual violence, as part of his contribution to the scientific record. Enslaved individuals were valued primarily as stores of wealth, which discouraged outright killing but did not prevent abuse. Horrific acts were often bracketed in his diary between mundane entries about livestock or killing snakes.
Influence of Satirical Eugenics Text
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(00:06:51)
  • Key Takeaway: Thistlewood was heavily influenced by the satirical 1752 tract The Man Plant, which proposed eugenics and artificial wombs, leading him to adopt dehumanizing agricultural metaphors for human breeding.
  • Summary: The text, written as satire mocking upper-class detachment, proposed raising humans like farm animals to improve the British breed. Thistlewood, like modern ’tech bros’ misinterpreting science fiction, seemingly adopted the text’s logic to justify his own cruel practices. The tract explicitly discussed improving the ‘breeding quality’ of people to populate colonies, paralleling Thistlewood’s actions toward the enslaved.
Sexual Assault and Justification
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(00:20:11)
  • Key Takeaway: Although Thistlewood’s sexual assaults preceded his reading of The Man Plant, he used the pseudoscientific theory to justify and rationalize his ongoing behavior.
  • Summary: Scholarly analysis suggests Thistlewood’s practices existed before his engagement with the text, but he used it to provide justification for continuing his sexual violence. Immediately after finishing the tract, Thistlewood recorded raping an enslaved woman named Eve, linking his intellectual consumption directly to his actions. He recorded his own assaults in Latin, contrasting with the English he used to describe the assaults committed by his peers, suggesting a narcissistic belief in his own superiority.
Systemic Sexual Violence on Plantations
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(00:24:48)
  • Key Takeaway: Sexual assault against enslaved women was a habitual and casual practice among all white men on the plantation, not limited to Thistlewood.
  • Summary: Another white worker, William Crookshanks, raped Eve while returning her after an escape, noting it casually in the diary. Later, four drunken white colonists, including Thistlewood’s friend Harry Weech, collectively raped Eve in the water room. This demonstrates that habitual rape was normal behavior for white men in this society, used both for pleasure and as a form of punishment for resistance.
Extreme Corporal Punishments
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(00:34:39)
  • Key Takeaway: Beyond flogging, Thistlewood and other overseers employed sadistic punishments like ‘pickling’ (rubbing wounds with salt, lime, and pepper) and forcing victims to ingest feces (‘Derby’s Dose’).
  • Summary: Pickling was a common escalation punishment applied after flogging to runaways, involving rubbing corrosive spices into open whip wounds. Derby’s Dose, a notorious extreme punishment in Jamaica, involved forcing enslaved people to defecate in the mouths of others, sometimes while gagged for extended periods. These extreme, sadistic methods were reportedly common among slave owners in Jamaica during Thistlewood’s early career, though they seemed to decline after the mid-1750s.
Thistlewood’s Rise and Asset Management
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(00:43:56)
  • Key Takeaway: Upon acquiring his own plantation, Breadnut Island, Thistlewood branded his 30 enslaved people with his ‘TT’ mark, viewing them strictly as valuable assets he managed for profit.
  • Summary: Thistlewood purchased his 160-acre farm in 1767 after years of working for others, moving his existing enslaved workforce onto it. He vaccinated his enslaved people not out of kindness, but to protect his valuable assets from smallpox. He kept a documented tally of every ’nice’ thing he did for them, such as giving rum, as a form of self-justification against his documented cruelty.
Resistance Through Herbal Abortifacients
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(00:51:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Enslaved women resisted Thistlewood’s control by secretly using the Bromeliad penguin plant, which Thistlewood favored for landscaping, as an herbal abortifacient to prevent carrying his children.
  • Summary: Thistlewood noted an unusual number of miscarriages among the women he owned, unaware that they were using the plant he cultivated for hedges. This represents a significant, albeit underground, exercise of agency by enslaved people against their enslaver’s desire to increase his human property. This resistance highlights the constant, hidden struggle for control within the brutal plantation system.
Intellectual Exchange Among Planters
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(00:57:14)
  • Key Takeaway: Enslaved individuals served as conduits for sharing contemporary scientific literature among white plantation owners in Jamaica.
  • Summary: Planters maintained social contact by exchanging letters and books detailing scientific discoveries, such as Benjamin Franklin’s work on electricity. The enslaved girl Bess delivered a copy of Franklin’s ‘Experiments and Observations on Electricity’ to Thomas Thistlewood in 1778. This exchange of knowledge occurred concurrently with the transmission of severe abuse.
Bess’s Intellectual Curiosity and Abuse
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(00:57:58)
  • Key Takeaway: Bess’s curiosity regarding scientific instruments led directly to severe physical punishment and subsequent sexual assault by Thistlewood.
  • Summary: Elizabeth Polka’s research suggests Bess may have examined Franklin’s illustrated texts during her forced journeys between masters’ homes. Thistlewood flogged the 12-year-old Bess in 1766 for tampering with his watch and telescope. Three years later, after punishing her for interacting with the telescope, Thistlewood first recorded raping her when she was 15.
Contextualizing Documentation of Violence
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(00:59:25)
  • Key Takeaway: The gendered coding of sexual documentation in private diaries was a common practice among Enlightenment-era men to conceal exploitation.
  • Summary: Thistlewood’s documentation of violence is contextualized alongside Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who recorded sexual encounters with Native women in coded language. Virginia planter William Byrd also kept a coded log of his sexual activity as a means of control, often using shorthand or Latin, languages less accessible to women. This practice allowed elite men to document, conceal, and control their exploitation of women.
Scale of Thistlewood’s Sexual Acts
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(01:02:32)
  • Key Takeaway: Thomas Thistlewood recorded 3,852 sexual acts with 138 women, overwhelmingly enslaved, during his time in Jamaica.
  • Summary: Richard Dunn estimated that the vast majority of these recorded acts constituted sexual assault against enslaved women. Thistlewood’s average annual sexual encounters increased from about 10 before Jamaica to around 200 after arriving, indicating sexual opportunity was a major factor in his decision to become a planter. He fathered about 14 children, all born enslaved, and documented punishing one of them with whipping.
Thistlewood’s Death and Legacy
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(01:04:32)
  • Key Takeaway: Thistlewood died at 65, and the subsequent British abolition of slavery failed to include a deep reckoning with the horrors perpetrated by planters.
  • Summary: Thistlewood lived to be 65, a relatively long life for a white man in Jamaica during that era, dying in 1786. Shortly after his death, the abolitionist movement gained traction in the British Empire. Britain ended slavery faster than the US but avoided grappling with the extent of the horrors or the fortunes built upon plantation profits.
Podcast Wrap-up and Guest Plug
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(01:07:02)
  • Key Takeaway: The guest promoted a new show called ‘Second Screens’ designed for neurodivergent audiences who wish to use their phones while watching.
  • Summary: Following the difficult discussion, the guest announced her upcoming show, ‘Second Screens,’ hosted by Madison Shepard. This show allows attendees to use their phones or laptops during the performance, catering to neurodivergent preferences. The guest also mentioned taking a break from comedy after the birth of her child.