Britain's Most Documented Monster #slavery #shorts

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Between 1750 and 1786, one man kept a diary of every day of his life in Jamaica.

[00:00:07]He wrote down everything. His weather observations, [music] his gardens, his scientific experiments.

[00:00:15]He also [music] wrote down every beating, every torture, and every rape.

[00:00:21]His name was Thomas Thistlewood, and historians call his diaries one of the most disturbing documents ever produced in the history of slavery.

[00:00:37]In April 1750, a 29-year-old Englishman named Thomas [music] Thistlewood stepped off a ship in Kingston, Jamaica.

[00:00:45]He was nobody.

[00:00:47]The second son of a tenant farmer from Lincolnshire with 14 pounds [music] in his pocket and no real prospects.

[00:00:55]Within weeks, he had a job overseeing enslaved people on a sugar plantation.

[00:01:00]And within his first month on the island, he had already witnessed things that would haunt a normal person forever.

[00:01:07]He watched his employer, a wealthy planter named Dorrell, whip runaway slaves, then rub salt, pepper, and lime juice into their open wounds.

[00:01:17]Three days later, Dorrell had a dead runaway slave's head cut off and mounted on a pole.

[00:01:24]Thistlewood didn't recoil.

[00:01:26]He took notes.