Podcast Summary

Behind the Bastards

Episode: Part Two: Thomas Thistlewood: Slave Plantation Owner and Diarist
Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Robert Evans (C), with guest Titi Lee (A), and producer Sophie (B)

Overview

This episode continues the exploration of Thomas Thistlewood, an 18th-century English slave plantation overseer and diarist in colonial Jamaica, infamous for his extreme cruelty, sexual violence, and the extensive documentation of his atrocities. Host Robert Evans and guest Titi Lee dissect Thistlewood’s worldview, influences, daily atrocities, and the disturbing ways he rationalized his actions using pseudoscience, literature, and the intellectual fashions of his era. The episode blends chilling historical detail with uncomfortable humor and reflection on the persistent legacies of slavery.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Worldview and Influences of Thistlewood

[04:43]

• Thistlewood saw himself as a “naturalist,” documenting his crimes as if contributing to scientific knowledge.
• He likened the management of enslaved people to animal husbandry, citing their financial “value” as the main distinguishing factor from livestock.
• He read widely from popular pseudoscientific and satirical tracts of the day—books that mixed dubious science, satire, and outright lies.

  “His intellectual diet … a mix of works of science and works of … literal, like, just like lies that are also being passed off as science. … This is his manosphere.” (C, [06:46])

2. Misinterpretation of Satire and the “Man Plant”

[07:59]

• Thistlewood was heavily influenced by a 1752 satirical tract, “The Man Plant,” which mocked eugenic ideas by proposing ‘breeding’ superior Britons using artificial wombs and raising children like livestock.

• The satire was misunderstood by Thistlewood—he took its eugenic analogies as serious inspiration for managing and abusing enslaved people.

  “I don’t know if it’s that he missed the satire entirely or that he just like a lot of these tech bros who read science fiction…and you’re not supposed to emulate.” (C, [14:37]) “It’s a torment nexus situation where Vincent Miller is describing the torment nexus that is treating people like livestock. And Thomas Thistlewood is like, what a cool idea.” (C, [14:38])

• Discussion of how satire, when stripped of context or willfully misunderstood, can justify horrific real-life actions—a dynamic still relevant today (e.g., “The Matrix” and current online cultures).

3. Dehumanization, Eugenics, and the Logic of Plantation Slavery

[10:00-16:50]

• Reading from “The Man Plant” highlights the extreme dehumanization—comparing women to fertile fields and children to crops.

• Thistlewood’s diaries reveal the insidious way he legitimized rape and breeding of enslaved women, a logic mirrored in how later white supremacist and pronatalist discourses operated.

  “Their fecundity will only be limited by such small reposes as the necessity of lying fallow…a well-disposed … woman may furnish her country with 130 to 140 or more children.” (C quoting “The Man Plant”, [16:16])

4. The Echo Chamber and Rationalizing Atrocity

[19:43]

• Thistlewood’s reading and echoing of pseudoscience didn’t create his cruelty but served as justification.

  “He considers it to justify…his behavior…that justification may have helped him continue to find ways to explain to himself why what he was doing was okay.” (C, [20:23])

• Vermeulen (only female scholar cited on Thistlewood) notes how his practices and his engagement with pseudoscience were “reciprocal.”

• Thistlewood specifically marked the harvest season by choosing a new victim to rape after reading “The Man Plant,” literally integrating intellectual inspiration with sexual violence.

  “Thistlewood marked the time of harvest by raping an enslaved woman named Eve…” (C quoting Vermeulen, [22:11])

5. Daily Life: Violence and Routine

[23:25]

• The episode recounts repeated escape attempts by Eve, an enslaved woman—and how recapture almost always meant further rape, not just by Thistlewood but by gangs of white men on the plantation.

• Thistlewood’s diary reveals how normalized rape and extreme violence were, noting them as casually as gardening tasks.

  “All the white men, particularly on these farms, are doing this habitually. Like, it’s incredible how casually he notes this…” (C, [24:23])

• Thistlewood coded his own sexual violence in Latin but referred to his peers’ abuse in plain English—hinting at a self-aggrandizing narcissism.

6. The Culture and Detail of Sadism

[34:09]

• Jamaican slavery fostered extreme sadism, with punishments far beyond whipping, including “pickling” (rubbing wounds with salt, peppers, lime) and the notorious Derby’s Dose (forcing a person to eat another’s feces).

  “If you need to know anything about the moral quality of the white men on Jamaica at the time…the common punishments involved rubbing shit into people's mouths or open wounds.” (C, [41:42])

• Many “respectable” historians have minimized these atrocities due to discomfort or unwillingness to credit abolitionist eyewitnesses.

7. Attempts at “Kindness” and Justification

[45:01]

• Thistlewood kept meticulous track of minor “gifts” to enslaved people, like a ration of herring or rum, seemingly to burnish his own image in his diary—another form of self-delusion and justification.

  “Definitely a sign of a not nice person when they keep a tally of every nice thing they do...” (A, [46:08])

8. Resistance and Agency

[50:33]

• Despite unrelenting oppression, enslaved women found ways to resist, such as using herbal abortifacients from Thistlewood’s own gardens to prevent forced pregnancies.

  “Some of these women were using this plant as an herbal abortifacient…agency for themselves.” (C, [51:54])

9. Systemic Child Sexual Abuse

[53:01]

• Thistlewood was a pedophile, regularly purchasing and abusing young girls as young as 11 or 12, detailed in his diaries.

  “He will buy girls when they’re 11 or 12, and he will, not long after, assault them.” (C, [53:00])

• The story of Bess, bought at 11 as a personal slave for Thistlewood’s favored enslaved woman, further illustrates the intertwining of intellectual curiosity and unthinkable human cruelty.

10. Broader Culture of Sexual Exploitation

[55:47]

• Other white men of the time (e.g., William Byrd, Samuel Pepys) also kept coded diaries of sexual exploitation, showing this was not an aberration but a recognized, coded subculture among the “enlightened” elite.

  “Enlightenment era men use quotidian writing in order to document, conceal and control their exploitation of women.” (C quoting Elizabeth Polka, [59:56])

11. Scale of Sexual Violence

[61:23]

• Thistlewood documented 3,852 sexual acts with 138 women; outside Jamaica he averaged 10 encounters a year, but in Jamaica: 200+ per year, underscoring how sexual exploitation was central to plantation life.

12. Legacy, Death, and Historical Reckoning

[63:23]

• Thistlewood fathered at least 14 enslaved children and flogged his own offspring.
• He died at age 65, living a long life for the era—facing no real consequences.
• Britain, while abolishing slavery earlier than the US, never properly reckoned with the horror or the fortunes built on such atrocities.

  “There was never any kind of organized attempt to grapple with the kind of horrors that had been perpetrated.” (C, [64:44])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On rationalization:

  “Maybe you’re just using all this stuff you’re reading as a justification to be shitty to people.” (C, [22:26])

• On missed satire:

  “It’s a torment nexus situation…What a cool idea. Why don’t I do that?” (C, [14:38])

• On normalized sadism:

  “Think about, like, something you have to do … a couple of times a week at your day job, and it’s like that for him … that’s his gig, you know?” (C, [39:29])

• On agency:

  “Some of these women were using this plant as an herbal abortifacient... It’s evidence of these people … taking some agency for themselves…” (C, [51:54])

• On historical reckoning:

  “There was never any kind of organized attempt to grapple with the kind of horrors… and how many British fortunes were based on them.” (C, [64:44])

• The bottom line:

  “He’s a normal example of the worst people ever.” (C, [53:39]) “None of them are particularly better than the others. … His whole society.” (C, [54:41])

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 06:17-08:58: “The Man Plant” and how satire fueled Thistlewood’s worldview
• 14:38-16:50: Quotes from “The Man Plant” and discussion of proto-eugenics
• 19:43-22:11: Vermeulen’s analysis, rape as part of the “harvest”
• 23:25-29:21: Eve’s repeated escapes, mass sexual abuse, and punishment culture
• 34:00-42:44: Detailed discussion of sadistic punishments, including pickling and Derby’s Dose
• 50:33-51:54: Enslaved women's agency—abortifacient resistance
• 53:01-55:45: Systemic child sexual abuse—story of Bess and comparison to other 18th-century diarists
• 61:23-62:19: Numbers: Thistlewood’s documented sexual crimes
• 63:23-65:14: His children, death, and posthumous lack of accountability

Tone and Conclusion

The hosts blend irreverent, uneasy humor (“this is a podcast for haters by haters”), grim irony, and candor, with frequent explicit acknowledgments of the horror and emotional toll of the content. Titi Lee often interrupts with incredulous, dark jokes, highlighting the emotional numbness or shock such evil provokes (“Maybe you’re just using all this stuff you’re reading as a justification to be shitty to people.” [C, 22:26]; “I don’t like that he goes by TT…” [A, 44:37]). Both wrestle with the question of how much detail is necessary to communicate the horrors without dehumanizing survivors further.

The episode concludes with a reminder that Thistlewood was not “an isolated monster,” but emblematic of a larger plantation society that normalized brutality and self-justification—an urgent reminder against sanitized historical narratives.

For more Behind the Bastards episodes:
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