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Speaker 1: Also media.

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Speaker 2: Ah and welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast

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Speaker 2: that you're listening to today and maybe other days. Probably

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Speaker 2: other days. I'm Robert Evans here to tell you about

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Speaker 2: some of the worst people in all of history and

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Speaker 2: to talk with us about some of the worst people

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Speaker 2: in all of history. Is someone who's not one of

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Speaker 2: the worst people in all of history, but it's in

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Speaker 2: fact my friend T T.

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Speaker 1: Lee.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. How are you doing.

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Speaker 3: I'm good.

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Speaker 4: I mean I still have time to become one of

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Speaker 4: the worst people.

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Speaker 2: In history, so I wanted to Yeah, like, I believe

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Speaker 2: you could be a contender. No, no, it's like that.

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Speaker 2: It's like that movie where fucking Marky Mark becomes a

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Speaker 2: pro football player by trying out, Like I think you could.

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Speaker 2: You could become a dictator if you show up.

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Speaker 3: If there was a competition show, yeah I need rules.

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Speaker 4: If there's like a rubric, I mean actually there probably is.

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Speaker 4: I don't know if I would do well actually in

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Speaker 4: that competition.

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Speaker 2: But see, that's this is what this is. And none

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Speaker 2: of these Network States Silicon Valley dictatorship people have any

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Speaker 2: sense of like fun because if you had like a

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Speaker 2: reality show where whoever one got to govern like three

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Speaker 2: million people's lives as like an iron fisted dictator. Like

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Speaker 2: the franchising potential for that show is incredible, especially if

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Speaker 2: any of them become nuclear armed. I mean, my god,

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Speaker 2: you could. You could keep people glued to the TV

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Speaker 2: like that's that's the new reality, Shoe.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, a competition for who gets the nuclear codes.

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Speaker 4: I mean, we might actually end up in better situation

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Speaker 4: than we are now.

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Speaker 3: Just give it to someone else.

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Speaker 1: See, I have an important question.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, how's woo Shue? Oh my god, wooshoo. He's right

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Speaker 3: behind me. Wait is there a video on that you guys? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 3: he's He.

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Speaker 4: Doesn't like when he's not the underve attention as I

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Speaker 4: don't know if any I feel like old days when

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Speaker 4: we used to go into the that big building in

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Speaker 4: Hollywood to record.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, sure would run around and make a lot of noise.

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Speaker 4: And then I had to stop bringing him because, Yeah,

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Speaker 4: but I discovered he doesn't like when he's not to

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Speaker 4: send her attention.

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Speaker 5: I love back in the day Anderson who Sho used

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Speaker 5: to hang and that was nice, It was really nice.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, he's an old dog, you know, he's about to

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Speaker 3: be nine.

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Speaker 5: Anderson will be all of had Anderson ten years next year,

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Speaker 5: which is horrific and awesome but horrific.

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Speaker 3: I would like her to age less.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, wouldn't we all like to age less?

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Speaker 1: Yeah?

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Speaker 5: Fair enough?

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Speaker 2: Would you if giving like the blood of a young

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Speaker 2: dog to Anderson would make Anderson younger? Would you do

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Speaker 2: the Peter Teal thing with Anderson?

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Speaker 5: I would commit so many horrific crimes to extend the

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Speaker 5: lives of Anderson. If I could extend Anderson's life longer,

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Speaker 5: the amount of crimes I would commit to do this

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Speaker 5: I probably shouldn't say on it on Mike, but my goodness,

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Speaker 5: I would commit biohacker.

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Speaker 3: Who's the guy who like is always botoxing his penis?

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Speaker 2: Ryan Jo? Are you talking about the guy who wants

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Speaker 2: to live forever?

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Speaker 3: Oh?

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Speaker 1: That vampire all but.

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Speaker 2: They're all botoxing?

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's one. There's one guy on Twitter? Yeah,

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Speaker 3: probably him. Yeah. I feel like I wonder when, yeah,

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Speaker 3: when the next dog?

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Speaker 2: Uh when the dog version of that?

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Speaker 3: The dog version of that? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because it does tend to like every after five

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Speaker 2: or ten years, it trickles down like people are now

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Speaker 2: doing like like cosmetic surgeries for their dogs and stuff.

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Speaker 2: It just takes a little while longer, uh for it

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Speaker 2: for for people to be like, well, maybe my dog

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Speaker 2: also needs to be ashamed that they're that there their

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Speaker 2: eyelids are drooping or something like that, even though they're

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Speaker 2: a bass a hound and that's how they're supposed to.

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Speaker 4: I mean they have bb also droops for the labooboos.

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Speaker 4: Now that's like a whole what thing on TikTok. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: there's like they like wear little doctor clothes and have little.

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Speaker 3: Gloves and lies. Oh my, they're great. The videos are.

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Speaker 2: Great, and I will fuck well, I love the modern world.

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Speaker 2: But you know what the modern world is built on,

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Speaker 2: tet slavery obviously, right, we're all we're all aware of

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Speaker 2: that today.

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Speaker 3: Horrific transition.

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Speaker 2: Robert I went and I wasn't given a lot of

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Speaker 2: options weekend we started the started this, how we started this,

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Speaker 2: and that was the easiest way to get to slavery.

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Speaker 2: You're never more than like two steps away when you're

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Speaker 2: talking about like really any history, human history, to be honest,

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Speaker 2: But when we talk about like the Atlantic slave trade, right,

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Speaker 2: chattel slave trade in the America's uh a lot of

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Speaker 2: like our documentation about like what happened is documentation of

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Speaker 2: like people kind of nearer to the end of the

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Speaker 2: process who like escaped and were able to write about it.

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Speaker 2: That's not exclusively it, but you get a lot more

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Speaker 2: from that period of time just because you know, earlier

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Speaker 2: in the system there were it was a lot harder

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Speaker 2: for somebody to break out of that system and then

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Speaker 2: to be able to like talk about what had happened

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Speaker 2: to them. And so when it comes to like kind

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Speaker 2: of the height of this period of time, one of

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Speaker 2: our best sources in terms of like how actually brutal

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Speaker 2: the system was on a day to day basis is

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Speaker 2: the notes the extensive diaries of a single man of

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Speaker 2: a guy who was a plantation owner in Jamaica, and

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Speaker 2: one of the worst like documented mot like sex criminals

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Speaker 2: and murderers and history, just because of like the stuff

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Speaker 2: he wrote in his own diary. And this guy's name

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Speaker 2: is Thomas Thistlewood, and he's someone who's like studied by

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Speaker 2: historians of slavery today because like you get something with

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Speaker 2: him that you don't get a lot, which is like

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Speaker 2: one of the guys actually doing It's like some of

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Speaker 2: those like internal notes that the Nazis took when they

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Speaker 2: were doing their shit, where you've got this guy who's

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Speaker 2: a part of this system that is still like a

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Speaker 2: century away from a reckoning, you know, almost at the

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Speaker 2: time that he dies, who's just like writing about it.

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Speaker 2: Is like this has got up this morning and here's

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Speaker 2: what I did to these people that I own. Wow,

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Speaker 2: So that's what we're talking about today. This is like

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Speaker 2: a bleak story, but it's really important. Not because Thistlewood

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Speaker 2: himself is like the worst specific guy who ever owned people,

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Speaker 2: but more because he's a pretty normal guy who owned people,

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Speaker 2: who was like unusually detailed in his his note taking. Right,

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Speaker 2: That's why we know about it, like.

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Speaker 3: A guy writing in his diary.

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Speaker 2: That's exactly. Yes, I want to say.

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Speaker 4: I had no idea what like, right before we started,

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Speaker 4: I was like, I don't know what we're talking about today,

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Speaker 4: and I asked you, I was like, is it gonna

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Speaker 4: be perfect yep?

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Speaker 3: Or diamonds?

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Speaker 2: Like this one's real bad? Here we go. I felt

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Speaker 2: the need to warn you about this.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I had a feeling.

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Speaker 4: I'm like, you know what, it's been a while since

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Speaker 4: I've done this podcast. It's it's it's gonna be a

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Speaker 4: brutal one. Yeah, but no, Well, yeah, well, I mean, obviously,

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Speaker 4: I'm sure there's horrific things in it. It's but while

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Speaker 4: that you were talking what you said about before people

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Speaker 4: realize as a reckoning, because that's something like I think

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Speaker 4: about a lot, like just like him, writing in a

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Speaker 4: diary feels like the most private, safe, like secretive thing. Right,

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Speaker 4: you just wrote in a piece of paper. There's no

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Speaker 4: such thing as xerox, there's no Internet. You just hide

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Speaker 4: it somewhere. But that's also like one of the most

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Speaker 4: lasting things because nowadays, and I could go away in

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Speaker 4: you know, one hundred years.

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Speaker 2: And this is one of those things where this guy, yeah,

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Speaker 2: like like this, there's a decent chance that like very

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Speaker 2: few people's lives who were like live tweeting or streaming

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Speaker 2: everything they do today will be as known in a

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Speaker 2: hundred years as Thomas Thistlewood's because he wrote it all

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Speaker 2: down on paper and it got like when he died,

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Speaker 2: his effects wound up and I think in a university's

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Speaker 2: collection it was like a long decades after his death

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Speaker 2: that someone found these and was like, oh my god,

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Speaker 2: like there's a lot of there's a lot of detail

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Speaker 2: in here about how slavery worked. He's also like our

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Speaker 2: best detail on what the climate of Jamaica was like

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Speaker 2: for about a hundred years because he was just taking

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Speaker 2: like really detailed notes and it would be like woke

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Speaker 2: up and committed these horrible sex crimes. Here's what the

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Speaker 2: weather was like, right, Like these are the diary increase

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Speaker 2: that he's leaving behind. So's it's one of those things

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Speaker 2: where you'll find you'll find whole books by people that

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Speaker 2: are just like exing the stuff from his diary about

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Speaker 2: the weather because that's important for like climactic.

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Speaker 3: Sciences first and impression.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there's this larger branch of scholarship that's

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Speaker 2: about his crimes against humanity. But it's it's kind of

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Speaker 2: like the Unobomber where he is also known for his

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Speaker 2: other work.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 3: Interesting reminds me.

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Speaker 4: I don't know why I thought of Arcadia the play,

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Speaker 4: but that's too obscure a reference where all the notes

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Speaker 4: being taken are anyways, I.

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Speaker 3: Probably wouldn't be brought up.

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Speaker 2: But anyway, what is nobody.

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Speaker 4: Because they go the Arcadi it is Tom Sopper play,

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Speaker 4: but in it they well, the reason I brought it

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Speaker 4: up is because people are taking notes and trying to

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Speaker 4: infer what happened, but then there's like slight misunderstandings of

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Speaker 4: like what actually happened. But I just find that interesting

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Speaker 4: if he mentions like a weird obscure bird or something,

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Speaker 4: and you're like, I just imagine some like you know,

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Speaker 4: bird hunter, like looking through his diary, like, yes, he's

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Speaker 4: a terrible slave owner, but there's a sign this extinct

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Speaker 4: bird exist.

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Speaker 2: We've documented that this animal lived here at this time too.

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Speaker 2: That is like the thing with his diaries is that

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Speaker 2: they're both really useful to like naturalists and also to

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Speaker 2: students of one of the worst things people ever did

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Speaker 2: to each other. So his name was Thomas Thistlewood. He

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Speaker 2: was born on March sixteenth, seventeen twenty one in tupelm Lincolnshire.

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Speaker 2: His father was Robert Thistlewood, and he was who was

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Speaker 2: a moderately successful farmer. You know, so this is in

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Speaker 2: you know ingelande. His dad is like an okay farmer, yeah,

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Speaker 2: but not like super wealthy, right, Like his his family

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Speaker 2: aren't aristocracy, but they're like landed and they're doing okay.

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Speaker 2: There would be like upper middle class by the time

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Speaker 2: his dad dies. And his dad dies pretty young. When

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Speaker 2: Thomas is six in seventeen twenty seven. Now, this is

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Speaker 2: one of those things where, like the early seventeen hundreds

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Speaker 2: were kind of coming into modernity, but there's still a

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Speaker 2: lot that's almost very medieval. So, like the father dies

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Speaker 2: and he's got multiple sons, everything's going to the firstborn son, right,

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Speaker 2: That's just the way shit tends to work. And so

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Speaker 2: if you're the second born son, either like a wealthy

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Speaker 2: family or of like a family like this, that's just

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Speaker 2: pretty comfortable. You're not gonna inherit any of that land

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Speaker 2: or really much in the way of wealth. Right, So

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Speaker 2: you kind of you grow up knowing your older brother's

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Speaker 2: getting everything and you're gonna have to figure out something

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Speaker 2: new to do something probably not. This is what fuels colonialism, right,

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Speaker 2: is to a heavy extent. You've got all these second

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Speaker 2: and third sons who are like, not gonna get shit

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Speaker 2: unless they get it themselves. So they go over to

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Speaker 2: the New World somewhere, and they probably die of cholera

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Speaker 2: in a month, but whatever. You know, some of them

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Speaker 2: get rich.

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Speaker 3: We could marry rich, but you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's your other option, is marrying rich. But

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Speaker 2: but you know some people tried to do both, and yeah,

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Speaker 2: this is kind of this is what's going to be

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Speaker 2: one of these guys who from the time he's like

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Speaker 2: five or six years old, knows, Okay, Dad's gone, I'm

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Speaker 2: I'm kind of all my own in terms of figuring out,

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Speaker 2: like what I'm going to do to make my fortune.

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Speaker 2: You know, Thomas would be one of these unhappy second sons.

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Speaker 2: His older brother John born in seventeen sixteen. And here

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Speaker 2: it's basically everything their dad does set aside some money

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Speaker 2: for Thomas, about two hundred pounds sterling. And you can

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Speaker 2: never kind of convert perfectly from that kind of money

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Speaker 2: to this kind of money because like most people back

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Speaker 2: then didn't have money, or at least didn't use it

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Speaker 2: most of the time. Like your average transaction is, like

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Speaker 2: your average working class person isn't handing over money for stuff.

250
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Speaker 2: You're often like bartering like well this time of year,

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Speaker 2: here's what I got and here's what I need. Right,

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Speaker 2: that's kind of a lot of a lot of the

253
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Speaker 2: use of currency or IOUs and stuff like that. So

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Speaker 2: but anyway you might translate his inheritance to like forty

255
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Speaker 2: or fifty thousand dollars, right, it's enough, it's going to

256
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Speaker 2: like pay for him to get through school basically, and

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Speaker 2: that's kind of it because for his whole childhood he

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Speaker 2: has to like pay people who are taking them in. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: exactly right, So this has to last the rest of

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Speaker 2: his chase. It sounds like a lot, I see, but

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Speaker 2: it's got to last him until or at least until

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Speaker 2: he's an adult, right, because he's he gets like moved

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Speaker 2: around almost as soon as his dad dies. And basically

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Speaker 2: these people who are teaching him, he's living with them,

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Speaker 2: or he's at a boarding school, and so wherever he is,

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Speaker 2: he's paying to be and he's paying people to take

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Speaker 2: care of him for the rest of his childhood because

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Speaker 2: that's kind of the only reliable social support there is.

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Speaker 2: Some of these people are his relatives, but he still

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Speaker 2: has to give them money because like that shit ain't free.

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Speaker 3: So if you travel with your bag of money and

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Speaker 3: you're like, well's coin.

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Speaker 2: For you, right, you get one coin a year for

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Speaker 2: taking care of me as like a seven year old.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So I wonder how much that does impact him

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Speaker 2: as a kid, because that's a very transactional way to

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Speaker 2: think of your childhood. Like, all right, now you have

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Speaker 2: this much money left if for your childhood and you

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Speaker 2: have to pay this much a year to the people

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Speaker 2: caring you so they could feed you, right, Like.

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Speaker 4: That's a wild and you really have a sense of

283
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Speaker 4: like how much your value is in society. And someone's like,

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Speaker 4: I don't want to take care of you for this much,

285
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Speaker 4: and you're like.

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Speaker 3: Here is it. I'm worth this much to be alive, Like.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, here's what I can pay to continue being alive, please,

288
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Speaker 2: And yeah, he's gonna be This is going to kind

289
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Speaker 2: of turn him into the perfect foot soldier of the

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Speaker 2: British Empire because he sees relationships is very transactional, and

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Speaker 2: he grows up knowing I'm gonna have to hustle constantly

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Speaker 2: for everything that I'm going to get, right, especially if

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Speaker 2: I want to be anywhere near as comfortable as like

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Speaker 2: my dad was and my older brother is going to be.

295
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Speaker 2: So in seventeen twenty nine and now eight year old

296
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Speaker 2: Thomas Thistle would have sent to a school in Lincolnshire.

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Speaker 2: This is a nice place, but it's not like the

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Speaker 2: kind of fancy boarding school that the wealthy sons of

299
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Speaker 2: the aristocracy are going to like send their kids to.

300
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Speaker 2: So he winds up boarding with a relative by marriage,

301
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Speaker 2: and he pays for his upkeep with his inheritance. And

302
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Speaker 2: he does this in various ways over the next six

303
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Speaker 2: years and three different schools. He studies Latin, he becomes

304
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Speaker 2: fluent in that, he learns Greek, and he studies reading, writing,

305
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Speaker 2: and a rhythm, and he's an intelligent kid. All signs

306
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Speaker 2: point to the fact that he did pretty well in school.

307
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Speaker 2: But it's also one of those things where once you're

308
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Speaker 2: like fourteen or fifteen, you're basically grown, and they're like,

309
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Speaker 2: it's time to apprentice in something and figure out what

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Speaker 2: you're actually gonna do for a living. So at age fifteen,

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Speaker 2: he moves into an uncle's house and he pays him

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Speaker 2: five pounds sterling a year to be an apprentice on

313
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Speaker 2: his farm. So he's like paying his uncle to teach

314
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Speaker 2: him how to run a farm, but he's because he's

315
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Speaker 2: not gonna he's gonna have to work on someone else's

316
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Speaker 2: he's not going to inherit any land of his own.

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Speaker 2: Sometime after this, a couple of years later, he.

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Speaker 3: First paid internship. Unpaid internship.

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Speaker 2: It's like an internship that you pay to attend at

320
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Speaker 2: your family, like you're paying your uncle to your like

321
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Speaker 2: to give you a paid internship, which is a shitty

322
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Speaker 2: gig really, like having done an unpaid internship, at least

323
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Speaker 2: you're not out anybody, right, Yeah, and it.

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Speaker 3: Sounds like he's working, he's given them free labor.

325
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fucked up actually, and this guy's his uncle. Yeah,

326
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Speaker 2: but that just that tells you something about how mercenary

327
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Speaker 2: a lot of this culture is at the time, right,

328
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Speaker 2: Like you wonder why did the British Empire do the

329
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Speaker 2: things that the British Empire did? Well, this is how

330
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Speaker 2: people are living on the island when they're better off, right.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, that's like it's like these are the citizens

332
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Speaker 4: who and this is like their norm.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you think they're going to treat people

334
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Speaker 2: in bengaal like, yeah, their own kill left to pay, Yeah, exactly.

335
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Speaker 2: So I don't know how long he spends in this

336
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Speaker 2: internship exactly, but he probably would have been somewhere around

337
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Speaker 2: eighteen when he sets off fully on his own to

338
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Speaker 2: make a living as a livestock dealer. Right. So he decides,

339
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Speaker 2: I don't have any land yet, but I've got some money.

340
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Speaker 2: I've saved up some left over from my inheritance. I'm

341
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Speaker 2: gonna start buying and selling livestock to try to make

342
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Speaker 2: a profit. And around this time, as he's starting his career,

343
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Speaker 2: he hooks up with a local girl for the first

344
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Speaker 2: time and she gets pregnant. Right, he gets this, this

345
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Speaker 2: young woman pregnant and they're not married. Now in this

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Speaker 2: period of time nearly seventeen hundreds, that there's this social level.

347
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Speaker 2: If you get someone pregnant, as the man, you have

348
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Speaker 2: two choices. Choice one is convinced this lady's parents to

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Speaker 2: let you marry their daughter, right, and that's very much

350
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Speaker 2: your job. She does not have a lot of choice

351
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Speaker 2: in the matter.

352
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Speaker 3: Right.

353
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Speaker 2: That's going to vary from family to family, But this

354
00:16:19,880 --> 00:16:24,920
Speaker 2: is primarily you interfacing with this young woman's family, right.

355
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Speaker 2: And if they don't want you to marry their daughter,

356
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Speaker 2: if they don't see you as a suitable match, you

357
00:16:29,440 --> 00:16:31,200
Speaker 2: can get in a shitload of trouble. You can go

358
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Speaker 2: to prison for fathering a bastard. Right. So, yeah, he

359
00:16:35,920 --> 00:16:39,360
Speaker 2: gets in this situation and this lady's parents. I don't

360
00:16:39,360 --> 00:16:41,920
Speaker 2: know much about this person, but and I say, I

361
00:16:41,920 --> 00:16:43,840
Speaker 2: don't know if literally if she is a girl like

362
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Speaker 2: a child, or if she's like she could have been

363
00:16:45,920 --> 00:16:48,240
Speaker 2: anywhere from like fifteen to twenty, given the way things

364
00:16:48,560 --> 00:16:53,040
Speaker 2: worked at the time, right, And I have no idea

365
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Speaker 2: like why, but her parents are like, this guy is

366
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Speaker 2: not a suitable match for our daughter. Maybe it's just

367
00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:02,000
Speaker 2: that he's poor. Maybe they see something like the sketchiness

368
00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:04,840
Speaker 2: lurking inside this man's soul. I have no idea, but

369
00:17:04,920 --> 00:17:06,960
Speaker 2: they say no. And so he really is looking at

370
00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:09,800
Speaker 2: like if this girl has a kid, I'm going I

371
00:17:09,800 --> 00:17:11,639
Speaker 2: could go to prison. I'm at least going to have

372
00:17:11,680 --> 00:17:13,520
Speaker 2: to pay like a heavy fine for what I did.

373
00:17:14,040 --> 00:17:15,840
Speaker 2: But then the child doesn't come to term and he

374
00:17:15,880 --> 00:17:18,920
Speaker 2: gets off scott free. Right. But this kind of inspires

375
00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:21,679
Speaker 2: him to like get the fuck out right, Like this

376
00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:23,720
Speaker 2: was my message of like I got it almost got

377
00:17:23,720 --> 00:17:26,120
Speaker 2: in a lot of trouble here. I need to actually

378
00:17:26,160 --> 00:17:30,760
Speaker 2: like escape my hometown, maybe get out of England altogether. Right.

379
00:17:32,240 --> 00:17:35,080
Speaker 2: And so in seventeen forty six, he travels to London

380
00:17:35,119 --> 00:17:37,840
Speaker 2: and he signs a contract with the East India Company

381
00:17:37,920 --> 00:17:40,639
Speaker 2: to act as a purser on of super cargo on

382
00:17:40,680 --> 00:17:44,000
Speaker 2: a ship headed for the Far East. This means that, like,

383
00:17:44,320 --> 00:17:46,159
Speaker 2: you know, you've got this boat and it's taking a

384
00:17:46,200 --> 00:17:49,120
Speaker 2: bunch of goods over to like India and other parts

385
00:17:49,160 --> 00:17:51,080
Speaker 2: of Southeast Asia, and it's going to come back with

386
00:17:51,119 --> 00:17:53,640
Speaker 2: a bunch of goods from the different places it visits

387
00:17:53,640 --> 00:17:55,359
Speaker 2: on this like two year year and a half two

388
00:17:55,400 --> 00:17:57,960
Speaker 2: year long voyage right as the age of sail, that's

389
00:17:57,960 --> 00:18:00,760
Speaker 2: how long shit takes back then. And he's his job.

390
00:18:00,800 --> 00:18:03,280
Speaker 2: He's getting paid to like manage the money on board. Right.

391
00:18:03,280 --> 00:18:05,160
Speaker 2: They've got a bunch of petty cash. Some of their

392
00:18:05,359 --> 00:18:08,600
Speaker 2: they're using to like buy goods to take back. Some

393
00:18:08,680 --> 00:18:10,879
Speaker 2: of it they're using to pay for like incidentals and

394
00:18:10,920 --> 00:18:13,680
Speaker 2: necessities on the voyage. And he's the guy, like man,

395
00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:18,199
Speaker 2: he's the ship's accountant almost right now. The ship, like

396
00:18:18,240 --> 00:18:20,679
Speaker 2: the one that he's signed onto, it's going to like

397
00:18:20,920 --> 00:18:23,560
Speaker 2: leave with goods loaded for you know, from the home

398
00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:26,119
Speaker 2: country for homesick colonizers in India, and then it's going

399
00:18:26,160 --> 00:18:27,960
Speaker 2: to come back with all sorts of shit. And you're

400
00:18:27,960 --> 00:18:31,600
Speaker 2: getting paid to do your job. But you also part

401
00:18:31,600 --> 00:18:34,720
Speaker 2: of like how you make good on being having a

402
00:18:34,800 --> 00:18:37,520
Speaker 2: job like this is along the way, you're buying stuff

403
00:18:37,560 --> 00:18:39,920
Speaker 2: at all of these different foreign ports that you're gonna

404
00:18:39,920 --> 00:18:42,280
Speaker 2: sell back at home. Right, that's understood to be like

405
00:18:42,359 --> 00:18:43,560
Speaker 2: a perk of the job, or.

406
00:18:43,600 --> 00:18:45,479
Speaker 3: Like flipping your own side hustle.

407
00:18:45,840 --> 00:18:47,680
Speaker 2: Right, you're going to like sell a bunch of tea

408
00:18:47,880 --> 00:18:50,800
Speaker 2: that you bought in India for like way more money

409
00:18:50,880 --> 00:18:54,359
Speaker 2: back in London or some shit like that. Right, So

410
00:18:54,400 --> 00:18:57,840
Speaker 2: the ship they're gone for almost two years, like it's

411
00:18:57,880 --> 00:18:59,840
Speaker 2: a long voyage, and they land back in black on

412
00:19:00,359 --> 00:19:04,160
Speaker 2: August twenty seventh, seventeen forty eight, Thomas disembarks. He's now

413
00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:07,080
Speaker 2: in his late twenties. He's a seasoned world traveler and

414
00:19:07,160 --> 00:19:09,760
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur. He gets his back wages for the journey,

415
00:19:09,960 --> 00:19:12,840
Speaker 2: which is like thirty pounds sterling something like eighty five

416
00:19:12,920 --> 00:19:15,399
Speaker 2: hundred bucks in modern money, which is not a lot

417
00:19:15,440 --> 00:19:18,679
Speaker 2: for like two years of hard labor on a boat.

418
00:19:20,240 --> 00:19:21,800
Speaker 2: Now he's got a bunch of shit with him that

419
00:19:21,840 --> 00:19:25,560
Speaker 2: he's going to try to make a fortune flipping and selling.

420
00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:27,760
Speaker 2: But he also spends most of his time like gambling

421
00:19:27,840 --> 00:19:31,080
Speaker 2: and playing cards and speculating on investments, and he's just

422
00:19:31,119 --> 00:19:33,840
Speaker 2: spending his money, and the money he's not spending on gambling,

423
00:19:33,880 --> 00:19:37,520
Speaker 2: he's spending on prostitutes. Right, Like we're talking London in

424
00:19:37,520 --> 00:19:41,040
Speaker 2: the seventeen hundreds, and he talks about this in a diary, right,

425
00:19:42,119 --> 00:19:44,480
Speaker 2: because this diary that this is like a thing that

426
00:19:44,520 --> 00:19:46,080
Speaker 2: he picks up at the school that he goes to

427
00:19:46,119 --> 00:19:47,760
Speaker 2: where you're they're like, so this diary.

428
00:19:47,800 --> 00:19:49,639
Speaker 4: Are we already starting with the diary because I know

429
00:19:49,640 --> 00:19:51,879
Speaker 4: when he was eight, he wasn't writing in it yet. Okay,

430
00:19:51,880 --> 00:19:54,639
Speaker 4: so we're in diary first hand account mode.

431
00:19:55,240 --> 00:19:58,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. He starts kind of in his early adulthood, right,

432
00:19:58,119 --> 00:20:00,399
Speaker 2: and he's this is like, this is not a diary

433
00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:03,280
Speaker 2: of his thoughts and feelings. We learn basically nothing about

434
00:20:03,359 --> 00:20:05,960
Speaker 2: what he how he feels. This is because he's just

435
00:20:06,080 --> 00:20:09,240
Speaker 2: like he's listing everything he buys and sells. So you

436
00:20:09,280 --> 00:20:12,840
Speaker 2: see part of the use of his diary, right, Yes,

437
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:16,760
Speaker 2: classic man where it's just like this is what dinner

438
00:20:16,800 --> 00:20:20,080
Speaker 2: costs me in seventeen forty eight, right, Like this is

439
00:20:20,119 --> 00:20:22,280
Speaker 2: the cost of like buying tobacco. This is how much

440
00:20:22,320 --> 00:20:24,640
Speaker 2: I lost at cards last night. This is how much

441
00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:28,399
Speaker 2: I paid this prostitute. Right, And so it's both like

442
00:20:28,480 --> 00:20:31,159
Speaker 2: you get you do get this weirdly detached look at

443
00:20:31,200 --> 00:20:34,000
Speaker 2: the inside of this guy, but you also get like

444
00:20:34,040 --> 00:20:36,000
Speaker 2: you can see why it's useful to all sorts of

445
00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:38,320
Speaker 2: different scholars where they're like well, what did it cost

446
00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:40,639
Speaker 2: to get like drunk and gamble and go out with

447
00:20:40,640 --> 00:20:43,359
Speaker 2: a prostitute in London in seventeen forty eight? Well, this

448
00:20:43,480 --> 00:20:46,280
Speaker 2: we know. Actually this guy took notes on it, right,

449
00:20:46,800 --> 00:20:48,000
Speaker 2: or at least we have an idea.

450
00:20:48,119 --> 00:20:48,920
Speaker 3: What did it cost?

451
00:20:49,520 --> 00:20:55,800
Speaker 2: A great question? So when to anti time machines exist, No, exactly,

452
00:20:55,800 --> 00:20:57,679
Speaker 2: you need to know what to bring along. I have

453
00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:00,240
Speaker 2: a lot of foreign currency from the past that I

454
00:21:00,320 --> 00:21:02,800
Speaker 2: keep in emergency bags in case I get transported back

455
00:21:02,840 --> 00:21:05,520
Speaker 2: in time. You wind up in ancient Rome. You don't

456
00:21:05,520 --> 00:21:07,080
Speaker 2: want to not have any dinari. I like, what are

457
00:21:07,119 --> 00:21:09,920
Speaker 2: you going to do? You know, Oh, you got to

458
00:21:09,960 --> 00:21:11,560
Speaker 2: fight for it in a gladiatorial pit.

459
00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:15,040
Speaker 3: You're not. Actually you would have like an old money collection,

460
00:21:15,359 --> 00:21:16,320
Speaker 3: like you.

461
00:21:16,359 --> 00:21:20,239
Speaker 2: Gotta be ready. Yeah, keep that and yeah, all right.

462
00:21:21,760 --> 00:21:24,600
Speaker 2: So whenever he was writing to know what it like

463
00:21:24,640 --> 00:21:26,600
Speaker 2: a night out with a prostitute cost in lead in

464
00:21:26,600 --> 00:21:29,040
Speaker 2: the seventeen forty eight whenever he wrote about stuff like this,

465
00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:32,160
Speaker 2: he would like box off the entry about the sex

466
00:21:32,200 --> 00:21:34,560
Speaker 2: stuff from the rest of his diary entries, and he

467
00:21:34,600 --> 00:21:38,080
Speaker 2: would preface it with the letters xxx, which is interesting.

468
00:21:38,119 --> 00:21:40,680
Speaker 2: I didn't know that went back that far. But apparently

469
00:21:40,720 --> 00:21:44,080
Speaker 2: it did, or at least that's what he chose, because like,

470
00:21:44,119 --> 00:21:46,440
Speaker 2: I don't think this was like a broader thing in society.

471
00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:50,119
Speaker 2: Yet it may just have been a coincidence. He chose

472
00:21:50,200 --> 00:21:51,800
Speaker 2: to do that to like kind of make a note

473
00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:53,639
Speaker 2: that he was about to start talking about sex, and

474
00:21:53,720 --> 00:21:56,199
Speaker 2: he would always write about it in Latin. And so

475
00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:58,960
Speaker 2: the very first entry that we have of him writing

476
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:00,680
Speaker 2: about sex is of a night he's spent with a

477
00:22:00,720 --> 00:22:03,720
Speaker 2: prostitute in seventeen forty eight, and he writes in the

478
00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:07,960
Speaker 2: evening to in the evening to mouliere two shillings, right,

479
00:22:08,840 --> 00:22:11,639
Speaker 2: and a mouliere is a contemporary term for a prostitute, Right,

480
00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:14,560
Speaker 2: So he spends two shillings for a night with this lady, right,

481
00:22:15,359 --> 00:22:18,320
Speaker 2: And he writes a G above her title, which is

482
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:20,320
Speaker 2: his way of letting her know G is the seventh letter.

483
00:22:20,359 --> 00:22:22,600
Speaker 2: It's his way of noting a F alphabetically, this is

484
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:24,960
Speaker 2: the seventh woman that he's slept with. So presumably, while

485
00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:28,000
Speaker 2: he's traveling around the world at various ports, he's doing

486
00:22:28,080 --> 00:22:31,120
Speaker 2: you know, he's probably paying women, right, that's likely who

487
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:34,240
Speaker 2: most of a through f FR. One of them's got

488
00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:36,840
Speaker 2: to be that lady that he got pregnant briefly, right,

489
00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:39,440
Speaker 2: assuming like, but this also tells you a lot about

490
00:22:39,520 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 2: him that he is. He's talking about the women that

491
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:45,560
Speaker 2: he's been with. He's just like alphabetically that right, Like

492
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:47,399
Speaker 2: that yeah, content the code.

493
00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:50,320
Speaker 4: I feel like that's like yeah, because it's like you,

494
00:22:50,359 --> 00:22:52,120
Speaker 4: even though it is private, there's a part of him

495
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:55,480
Speaker 4: that's like just in like yes, in case someone finds it,

496
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:57,720
Speaker 4: he's writing it in like a secret code. That's what

497
00:22:57,760 --> 00:23:00,439
Speaker 4: I did want to tek a child in life, my

498
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:02,399
Speaker 4: first pink diary, like right, you.

499
00:23:02,440 --> 00:23:03,439
Speaker 3: Know, like pig Latin.

500
00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:05,000
Speaker 2: It's great that you pick up on that.

501
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:05,760
Speaker 3: Not quite Latin.

502
00:23:05,840 --> 00:23:08,480
Speaker 4: I wasn't writing Yeah, I wasn't writing Latin back then,

503
00:23:08,520 --> 00:23:09,320
Speaker 4: but pig Latin.

504
00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:11,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wasn't hiring prostitutes there, so.

505
00:23:12,240 --> 00:23:14,679
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I would hope not. But it is, like,

506
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:17,200
Speaker 2: what you've picked up on is actually something scholars are

507
00:23:17,240 --> 00:23:19,159
Speaker 2: really interested in because there's a lot of debate as

508
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:21,840
Speaker 2: to like why did he write about sex this way?

509
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:24,479
Speaker 2: Why did he do it in Latin? Right? And that

510
00:23:24,600 --> 00:23:26,880
Speaker 2: is one of the theories, right as we'll talk about that. Basically,

511
00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:28,800
Speaker 2: this was his way of like if somebody comes across this,

512
00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:30,720
Speaker 2: I don't want anyone at least, I don't want anyone

513
00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:35,359
Speaker 2: uneducated knowing what I've been writing about, you know, And

514
00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:37,520
Speaker 2: from what we can tell, this is a guy who

515
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 2: I don't know if we'd call him like a nymphomaniac today,

516
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:43,760
Speaker 2: but sex is a lot bigger part of his life

517
00:23:43,760 --> 00:23:46,200
Speaker 2: than people would have admitted to then, like a polite

518
00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:48,600
Speaker 2: man would have admitted to in this period of time. Right,

519
00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:52,840
Speaker 2: And he tries one last time after he gets back

520
00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:56,159
Speaker 2: from this overseas voyage to have a proper marriage with

521
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:59,320
Speaker 2: someone in England and like start a life on the island.

522
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:01,920
Speaker 2: He sits down with the parents of a girl that

523
00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,680
Speaker 2: he'd known as a younger man, and he asks them like, hey,

524
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:07,720
Speaker 2: can I marry your daughter? And again he writes that

525
00:24:07,760 --> 00:24:10,240
Speaker 2: they entertained him with great civility, which one of his

526
00:24:10,280 --> 00:24:12,240
Speaker 2: biographers said was like that was him saying that they

527
00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:15,359
Speaker 2: said no, right, that they were like they politely said, absolutely,

528
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:19,320
Speaker 2: you cannot marry our daughter. You're a creep, right, Like yeah, there's.

529
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:21,080
Speaker 3: Stuff that he like non you know, like when you

530
00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:21,960
Speaker 3: meet someone.

531
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:24,400
Speaker 2: Like something's wrong behind this fucker's eyes.

532
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:25,919
Speaker 4: You hear like, oh, what's wrong with them? And then

533
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:28,280
Speaker 4: you're like, oh, I see. That's why, Like the vibes

534
00:24:28,320 --> 00:24:29,760
Speaker 4: are off, something's wrong.

535
00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:32,480
Speaker 2: He looks like the kind of guy who lists women

536
00:24:32,520 --> 00:24:37,440
Speaker 2: alphabetically and his weird crime diary, Like, yeah, yeah, he.

537
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:39,760
Speaker 3: Just spears correct in their assessment.

538
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:43,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, good call. Don't let this guy marry your daughter.

539
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:44,440
Speaker 3: Good call.

540
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:46,600
Speaker 2: So during this period of time, as at all other

541
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 2: points in his life, Thomas read voraciously, and he took

542
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:52,000
Speaker 2: notes in his diary on what particularly interested him in

543
00:24:52,040 --> 00:24:54,640
Speaker 2: the books that he was reading. In January of seventeen

544
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:58,879
Speaker 2: forty nine, this was abortions. He's really interested in. This again,

545
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 2: tells you a lot about what what's happening elsewhere in

546
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 2: this guy's life is he's just casually interested in how

547
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:07,199
Speaker 2: to make a bort to fasciants, right, like drugs to

548
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:10,600
Speaker 2: induce like abortion, wow or a miss like he often

549
00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:14,000
Speaker 2: frames his drugs to induce a miscarriage, right, And one

550
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 2: of his recipes. I just found this interesting because this

551
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:18,480
Speaker 2: tells you, like, again, one of the things that, oh man,

552
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 2: the society believes at the time for an aborti fasciant

553
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,359
Speaker 2: at the time is one pound of bitter apples. I

554
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:26,840
Speaker 2: think that's what it means. It's it's like ld of bitter.

555
00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 2: So it's an amount of bitter apples steeped in beer

556
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,840
Speaker 2: and cooked at least twice. It says what it said

557
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:37,119
Speaker 2: will cause abortions certainly, so bitter apples steeped in beer.

558
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:40,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm covering my unborn baby's ears right now.

559
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:40,640
Speaker 1: Yeah.

560
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:43,480
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, the good news is I don't think there's

561
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:47,679
Speaker 2: a lot of bitter apples around anymore, although depending on

562
00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 2: the state of reproductive healthcare in the near term, I

563
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:51,639
Speaker 2: don't know. I don't Also, I kind of doubt this

564
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:53,440
Speaker 2: worked very well, but maybe it did.

565
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:58,359
Speaker 3: He's like making drinks to like feed a little witch.

566
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:01,679
Speaker 2: He's making morning after pills. Yeah, he's interested, or at

567
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:04,200
Speaker 2: least he's put part of like one of the things

568
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:07,040
Speaker 2: that's theorizes that if he didn't need it, then he

569
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:09,439
Speaker 2: was taking down notes while he was like near a

570
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 2: library on how to make basically morning after pills because

571
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 2: he foresaw because of what had happened to him in

572
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 2: his past, he was like, I might need to do

573
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 2: that in the future, right like, because the other thing

574
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 2: he's doing at the same time is he's writing down

575
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:24,520
Speaker 2: recipes for cures for venereal diseases because This is a

576
00:26:24,520 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 2: guy who's probably by this point slept with prostitutes and

577
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:30,160
Speaker 2: ports all around the world. He's picked up a lot

578
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:33,480
Speaker 2: of VD right, Yeah, like this is not like there's

579
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,679
Speaker 2: no antibiotics. They don't know anything about like how to

580
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 2: prevent disease. So he catches chlamydia, and he writes, this

581
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:45,240
Speaker 2: is like the recipe he gives for a treatment for chlamydia.

582
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 2: Take every other day one dose of any purging pills,

583
00:26:48,119 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 2: and continue that course if your strength will allow it,

584
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:52,879
Speaker 2: until the running change both its color and consistency and

585
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 2: appears the same as the semen. Right, that's like this

586
00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:58,359
Speaker 2: like discharge that happens when people get the clap. So

587
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:01,719
Speaker 2: he's taking these like weird bamlmes, and we don't know

588
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:04,680
Speaker 2: exactly what's in them, right, because there's these are both

589
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 2: cures for like the clap and for you know, gnarrhea

590
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:10,119
Speaker 2: that guys are like buying on the streets. One of

591
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 2: them is called Ciderham's common purging. One of them is

592
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:15,760
Speaker 2: called balm captive. And we don't know exactly what he

593
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:18,639
Speaker 2: was taking. But I did find a dissertation by Elizabeth

594
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:22,880
Speaker 2: Polcha for Northeastern University that discussed a similar quack remedy

595
00:27:22,960 --> 00:27:25,800
Speaker 2: that this exact guy used later for the same diseases

596
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 2: Wards Pill and Drop, which were these blue, red and

597
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:33,480
Speaker 2: white pills that were filled with arsenic and other poisons.

598
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:36,960
Speaker 2: So that's what we're taking for VD. It's like arsenic, yeah,

599
00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 2: and like mercury and shit, that's what people put in

600
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:44,679
Speaker 2: these because they like, Wow, it's the same logic that

601
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:48,320
Speaker 2: a lot of like bullshit new age medicine stuff uses

602
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 2: today where they're like, look, it's drawing out the toxins.

603
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:53,920
Speaker 2: Where they're like, if you give someone this like arsenic,

604
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 2: that they wind up like their body purges everything, like

605
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:00,880
Speaker 2: they wind up vomiting and like right, and so they're

606
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:02,560
Speaker 2: like it must be cleansing you.

607
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 4: I mean, it's like, I think we covered this in Cracked,

608
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 4: but they used to do lysyl was originally invented as

609
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 4: like a vagina cleaner. So yeah, I mean, I'm sure

610
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 4: that men didn't have great health care before either. I mean,

611
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:16,720
Speaker 4: they got there no little faster than we did.

612
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 2: But right, yeah, twenties, Yeah, no one's doing great. And

613
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 2: I think the logic is the same as with lysol,

614
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 2: where it's like, well, this looks like it hurts, like hell,

615
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:29,280
Speaker 2: so it must be working, right, It's like, now you've

616
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 2: just poisoned.

617
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 3: Yourself, disinfect everything.

618
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're all just taking arsenic. So by the

619
00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 2: spring of nineteen forty nine, things are not going well

620
00:28:39,800 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 2: for Thomas. He has every venereal disease known to man.

621
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 2: Run out of his money seventeen forty nine. Yeah, wow,

622
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:49,840
Speaker 2: we skipped. Yeah no, he's two hundred years.

623
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 3: Old now, a real time traveler.

624
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 2: Yeah no. So this guy, I mean, he's just sick

625
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 2: as hell all the time, and he's run out of money.

626
00:28:57,400 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 2: All the money he got doing his merchant marine. Shit,

627
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:03,360
Speaker 2: he's loan through, he's got you know, he's got some

628
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:06,120
Speaker 2: assets that he's still selling from his trip. But he's

629
00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 2: doing badly enough that he's borrowing money from his landlady,

630
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:12,920
Speaker 2: Which that's like a level of doing bad, right when

631
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,080
Speaker 2: like you can't eat, you're not even paying your land lady,

632
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 2: you're like having to borrow money from her. Yeah, And

633
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:20,959
Speaker 2: he's also borrowing from his brother and complaining in his

634
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:23,320
Speaker 2: diary about how lonely he is all the time. So

635
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 2: he takes a little trip to the continent where he

636
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:27,800
Speaker 2: tries to sell off some of his goods and he's

637
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 2: doing badly enough that by the end of seventeen forty

638
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:32,800
Speaker 2: nine he finds himself back in London and he visits

639
00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:35,680
Speaker 2: this place called the Jamaica Coffee House, And as best

640
00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 2: as I can tell, this is like a business in

641
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:40,640
Speaker 2: it it's like a cafe basically, but it's also kind

642
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:43,720
Speaker 2: of an advertisement for white people to go to Jamaica,

643
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 2: which at the time is like, I think it's the

644
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 2: wealthiest agricultural colony in the British Empire. They're making sugarcane, right,

645
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 2: that's what they're growing over there, Right, they're producing sugar basically.

646
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:59,600
Speaker 2: And the Brits had had Jamaica not that long at

647
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:02,160
Speaker 2: this point. They captured it from the Spaniards in sixteen

648
00:30:02,280 --> 00:30:04,960
Speaker 2: fifty five, right, so we're less than a century into

649
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 2: like English control of the island. And they've done in

650
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 2: this little period of time where they've dominated Jamaica. They've

651
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 2: done their best. They're trying to settle this island, but

652
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 2: they're having trouble because it seems to them that Jamaica,

653
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 2: like life on Jamaica, has evolved primarily to kill English people.

654
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 2: Like they'll send over a bunch of young white guys

655
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 2: to do the quote unquote skilled work on you know,

656
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:31,239
Speaker 2: and a lot of that's over seer work managing these

657
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:34,280
Speaker 2: slave plantations. And most of these guys die in the

658
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:37,160
Speaker 2: first year, right, that's just known. You get a boat

659
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 2: with like two hundred white kids from the main island,

660
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 2: and like eighty of them are going to be or

661
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 2: like one hundred and eighty of them are going to

662
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:45,160
Speaker 2: be dead within like a year, year and a half.

663
00:30:45,240 --> 00:30:46,920
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder why you send a bunch of people

664
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 4: to go to already a land where people live, and.

665
00:30:50,120 --> 00:30:52,600
Speaker 3: You're like, why do the people who live here keep

666
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 3: trying to kill us? We're just trying to colonize them.

667
00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:59,720
Speaker 2: It's also just like the people who live there, because

668
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:01,560
Speaker 2: this is all so you know that the slaves who

669
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 2: are brought there, the enslaved people, also die at an

670
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:08,120
Speaker 2: elevated rate because like none of them have grown up

671
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 2: around the various like diseases and bugs that are there, right,

672
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 2: Like they're getting bit by mosquitoes and getting shit that Like.

673
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 4: Oh, you mean they're just dying of natural car I

674
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:19,680
Speaker 4: thought you meant like they're being fought off.

675
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 2: That happens. That does happen. That's part of this because

676
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 2: there is there's a heavy maroon. They're called maroons, right,

677
00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:28,680
Speaker 2: which is like people they're former slaves and descendants of

678
00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 2: former slaves who escaped Spanish plantations and formed independent communities.

679
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 2: And these like really forested off in like mountainous chunks

680
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 2: of the island, right. So it's areas that where it's

681
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 2: hard to control and you can't. Great Britain has troops

682
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 2: in Jamaica, but as soon as you send soldiers out

683
00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 2: into these like these these heavily wooded parts of Jamaica,

684
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 2: they just start dying of diseases lest left and right.

685
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 2: You know, you can't keep a force out there for

686
00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 2: any length of time because the natural world will kill

687
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 2: more of them than the enemy. But the enemy will

688
00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 2: also kill them because these maroons by this point, these

689
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 2: are the people from the slave populations who survived their

690
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 2: first years in Jamaica, so they are hardened to the

691
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 2: different diseases and bugs and whatnot that exist on the island.

692
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:18,600
Speaker 2: And they know these like forested, dense like rural areas,

693
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 2: so they're able to fight very effectively this guerrilla war.

694
00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:24,880
Speaker 2: So yes, it is both a mix of the natural

695
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 2: environment and these different maroon communities that are killing all

696
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 2: of the young white kids who come here, right, and

697
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 2: it goes badly enough for Great Britain that about a

698
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:39,080
Speaker 2: decade before Thomas Thistlewood shows up in Jamaica, the Brits

699
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 2: give up and they offer terms to the Maroon communities.

700
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:44,320
Speaker 2: And so they say to these like these independent chunks

701
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 2: of the island basically that are made up of former

702
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 2: slaves and their descendants, will recognize your independence and will

703
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 2: recognize your self rule over your territory. And in return,

704
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 2: you have to keep the roads open for us so

705
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 2: we can transport goods. And you have to not raid

706
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 2: these plantass and whenever future slaves escape from our plantations,

707
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:05,960
Speaker 2: you have to help us bring them back. You have

708
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 2: to help us if there's an uprising by the enslaved population. Right,

709
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,400
Speaker 2: there's like a treaty where these these marine communities agree

710
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:14,600
Speaker 2: to all this in order to stop not have to

711
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 2: keep fighting these constant wars with the English colonizers. Right,

712
00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 2: so this is like, you know, it's a pretty it's

713
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 2: an ugly thing, like it's it's a morally complicated thing,

714
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:26,360
Speaker 2: but you understand the decision these like marine communities are making.

715
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 2: They're like, well, yeah, at least we get to keep

716
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 2: living on our own. You know, they're not quite.

717
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 4: A sovereign nation, so there's no like big war to

718
00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 4: be fought, but they're not quite acknowledging that, like England

719
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 4: owns the whole place, and England's like, right, we own this,

720
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 4: but we don't, but we do, but.

721
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 2: We're we will will recognize your right to stay in

722
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 2: your area if you stop fucking with trade basically, right, Like,

723
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 2: that's kind of the agreement that these communities come to

724
00:33:52,040 --> 00:33:55,320
Speaker 2: with these agents of the empire. You know, who else

725
00:33:55,680 --> 00:34:00,720
Speaker 2: are agents of the British Empire? Maybe maybe a sponsors,

726
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 2: especially if it's like one of those big, big London

727
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:11,320
Speaker 2: banks they might be advertising on this show. Who's to say?

728
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 2: And we're bad, how we're feeling.

729
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:18,720
Speaker 3: Sad?

730
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:25,000
Speaker 4: Well, you know, as you might expect, my mood has

731
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 4: gone down since before we started question.

732
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 3: But in many ways, I'm also happy to see you,

733
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 3: so I can see you.

734
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 2: Too, happy to see you, happy to learn about how

735
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:37,239
Speaker 2: shitty life was in the seventh mid seventeen hundreds, like

736
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 2: really just a bad time to be a person. So yeah,

737
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:46,400
Speaker 2: into seventeen or start of seventeen fifty, Thomas Thistlewood books

738
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:48,840
Speaker 2: Passage on a boat after saying goodbye to his friends

739
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:51,360
Speaker 2: and family, and this is goodbye forever. He's never going

740
00:34:51,400 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 2: to see any of them again. He's like thirty, and

741
00:34:53,719 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 2: he's saying like goodbye for because I'm going to an

742
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:58,359
Speaker 2: island almost almost certainly be dead in a year, right,

743
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 2: And in fact, it's one of the you get this

744
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 2: hint of how disposable these men being sent over are

745
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 2: that like within minutes of boarding, his luggage is broken

746
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 2: into and his liquor collection is stolen, right, And I

747
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:12,920
Speaker 2: think it's just this like, look, steal whatever you can

748
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:14,279
Speaker 2: from these guys. They're all going to be dead in

749
00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:15,640
Speaker 2: six months, Like fuck it.

750
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:16,000
Speaker 1: You know.

751
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:19,359
Speaker 4: It's like there's no law once you enter or don't

752
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:23,399
Speaker 4: you step off of England, there's a law.

753
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 2: It's very much like on the way to Jamaica. It's

754
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:29,799
Speaker 2: certainly like that, Like this is still a period of time.

755
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 3: Like have you ever taken a flight on the Spirit

756
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 3: Airlines Vegas? That's what that makes me think of.

757
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,359
Speaker 2: That's it's like a flight. It's like a Spirit flight

758
00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:40,520
Speaker 2: to Vegas, right, including some of the people on that

759
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:43,239
Speaker 2: plane are being trafficked, right, Like some number of these

760
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:45,760
Speaker 2: men on these boats with Thomas have been like knocked

761
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:48,239
Speaker 2: out the night before at a bar and they're just

762
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 2: wake up working on a boat. Right, That's how that's

763
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:55,560
Speaker 2: how you put them in on boats in this time, right. Yeah,

764
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:58,360
Speaker 2: they actually get stopped by like the British Navy on

765
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 2: their way to Jamaica, and the Navy's trying to make

766
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:02,960
Speaker 2: sure there's not like guys on there who got like

767
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:05,200
Speaker 2: beaten up at a port and are being forced into

768
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 2: labor because it's like a it's a major problem. So

769
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:10,520
Speaker 2: it is like it is the wild West. I mean

770
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 2: it's it's it's worse than that, but like it's there.

771
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:16,839
Speaker 2: You are in between these settled areas. There's basically no rule.

772
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:19,239
Speaker 2: But part of the appeal of Jamaica who guy like

773
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 2: Thomas is it's known at the time, the like marketing

774
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 2: nickname for Jamaica when they're trying to get these young

775
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 2: white guys to move over there, is that it's the

776
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:31,279
Speaker 2: best poor man's country, right, And what that means is

777
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:34,520
Speaker 2: that if you don't have any money, you can and

778
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 2: you don't have any standing in society back in Scotland

779
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 2: or Ireland or you know, England, you can go to

780
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:44,879
Speaker 2: Jamaica and you will be number one, you can get

781
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:48,319
Speaker 2: rich there, and number two, you'll get respected because all

782
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 2: white men are equally respected. That's the idea, right. It's

783
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 2: not exactly true, but one of the things that's said

784
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 2: about planter culture is that any white man who shows

785
00:36:57,600 --> 00:37:01,440
Speaker 2: up at any plantation in Jamaica will get like he'll

786
00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 2: get put up for the night and get fed a

787
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:05,440
Speaker 2: good meal. It doesn't matter how poor you are or

788
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 2: where you come from. There's this level of egalitarianism for

789
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 2: white men in Jamaica. Right. And as we'll talk about,

790
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 2: this is not entirely what it sounds like, but this

791
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 2: is how it's being marketed, right, This is how guys

792
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:21,359
Speaker 2: like Thomas are convinced to go there. And I want

793
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:23,080
Speaker 2: to quote now from a two thousand and six article

794
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:27,160
Speaker 2: in Caribbean Quarterly by James robertson the glowing promises which

795
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 2: encourage successive European migrants to sail to Jamaica, often shattered

796
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 2: against the brutal island society these Johnny Newcombs encountered, an

797
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 2: early nineteenth century bookkeeper, wrote home, regretting his choice. Instead

798
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:39,960
Speaker 2: of being a gentleman's life, it is more like a

799
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:42,839
Speaker 2: slave continuing I'll die before I'll be a planter. Though

800
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:44,800
Speaker 2: it is the best forgetting money. A person that is

801
00:37:44,840 --> 00:37:46,920
Speaker 2: hard enough to manage the business make it to be

802
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 2: an overseer and have three or four hundred pounds a year,

803
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:52,200
Speaker 2: but no one has wages equal to their hazards. Nineteen

804
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:54,479
Speaker 2: out of twenty die without getting anything, and I fear

805
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 2: I shall be one of the unhappy number. These were

806
00:37:57,160 --> 00:37:59,600
Speaker 2: daunting odds, and while the brutalizing work contrasted with the

807
00:37:59,640 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 2: splendid prospects that had persuaded him to migrate, even if

808
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 2: global farm boys continue to swallow recruiters golden tails, the

809
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:09,560
Speaker 2: supply was never sufficient for all the vacancies. So this

810
00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:10,320
Speaker 2: is one of those.

811
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:12,239
Speaker 3: They're being recruited.

812
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:14,400
Speaker 4: Oh sorry, Well, just to clarify, when you say he's

813
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 4: kiss he's like, I'll never be a planter. But they're

814
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 4: still like being paid as not well to be a planter.

815
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 4: And so they're kind of being told they could be

816
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 4: a boss and they're being Is that right or are

817
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 4: they already immediately going into slavery the white people.

818
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,760
Speaker 2: I mean, they're not owning slaves, but they're managing slaves

819
00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 2: for slave owners. That's the start of the ladder once

820
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:36,040
Speaker 2: you get over here. And what that guy is saying,

821
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 2: with that bookkeeper saying is that the only way to

822
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 2: really get rich is to make enough money to buy

823
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:42,799
Speaker 2: a plantation of your own and be a planter. But

824
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,200
Speaker 2: almost no one gets there. Nineteen out of twenty people

825
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:46,879
Speaker 2: will die before making any money at all.

826
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:50,759
Speaker 4: Right, that's what you said, Well he's not, actually, so

827
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 4: there's not having the white people like actually do the

828
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:54,320
Speaker 4: labor still.

829
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:57,359
Speaker 2: The white people. The labor the white people are doing

830
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:01,799
Speaker 2: is making the black enslaved people. That's the labor for

831
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:04,359
Speaker 2: white Now, there are some there are some experts who

832
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:06,839
Speaker 2: are like making metal things or what not. Those there

833
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:08,799
Speaker 2: are jobs, and like that guy we heard from as

834
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:10,799
Speaker 2: a bookkeeper, so that's not the only job for these

835
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:13,440
Speaker 2: young white men. But what this guy is saying is

836
00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 2: that as soon as he got over on the island,

837
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:18,000
Speaker 2: he realizes it's a scam because there's almost no way

838
00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 2: to get make enough money to leave Jamaica again. And

839
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 2: you're definitely going to die there, right, Like something on

840
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 2: the island will kill you. So you've cut your life

841
00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:31,719
Speaker 2: short and it's just this miserable situation. So that's that's

842
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:36,080
Speaker 2: the where Thomas stumbles into on May fourth, seventeen fiftieth,

843
00:39:36,160 --> 00:39:38,799
Speaker 2: the day he gets to Jamaica, and he starts like

844
00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:41,319
Speaker 2: that other guy, working as a bookkeeper and eventually an

845
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 2: assistant overseer on a plantation. The idea is that soon

846
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:49,280
Speaker 2: he'll get promoted to overseer, but this doesn't materialize. Now

847
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 2: Lucky for Thomas, there's not nearly enough healthy white guys, right,

848
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:55,800
Speaker 2: So when this first place that hires him, when he

849
00:39:55,840 --> 00:39:57,840
Speaker 2: finds out they're not going to promote him where he

850
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 2: wants to, he's able to get another job really easily.

851
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:03,839
Speaker 2: He survives his first six months and then his first year,

852
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:07,719
Speaker 2: and after that point options start to open up for

853
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:11,279
Speaker 2: somebody like you, because you've proven that you're not going

854
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:15,439
Speaker 2: to die right away in Jamaica, so you're valuable to hire, right.

855
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 2: And so all of these plantations that none of them

856
00:40:18,200 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 2: have enough white men, right, even if they have enough

857
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:23,200
Speaker 2: and slave people, they don't have enough like guys to

858
00:40:23,680 --> 00:40:26,719
Speaker 2: run them for them, because the slave the enslaved population

859
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:30,919
Speaker 2: vastly outnumbers the white population, right. And this is part

860
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:33,480
Speaker 2: of why Jamaica in this period is the most productive

861
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 2: slave plantation in the British Empire. About half of the

862
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 2: forty five thousand tons of sugar that were imported into

863
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:42,799
Speaker 2: Britain each year came from Jamaica. And while white overseers

864
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 2: and technical employees like Thomas were a part of the workforce,

865
00:40:45,960 --> 00:40:48,799
Speaker 2: most of it isn't slaved Africans or their descendants. There's

866
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:51,200
Speaker 2: only rough numbers here, but by the time Thomas lands

867
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:53,960
Speaker 2: on the island, there's about eighteen thousand white people and

868
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:58,879
Speaker 2: about another seven thousand free black or like mixed race

869
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,799
Speaker 2: people on the island. Right, So like eighteen thousand white

870
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:04,680
Speaker 2: people know that there's another seven thousand free non white people.

871
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:08,799
Speaker 2: The enslaved population is one hundred and seventy thousand. And

872
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 2: so when we talk about why there's this reputation that

873
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 2: any white man will be treated well in Jamaica, it's

874
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 2: because there's not as much room for the rich people,

875
00:41:20,800 --> 00:41:23,720
Speaker 2: the rich white people, to exclude the poor white people

876
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:26,400
Speaker 2: because they're so outnumbered. Right, you kind of need these

877
00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:28,719
Speaker 2: poor white guys at your back in case there's a

878
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:32,279
Speaker 2: slave uprising, which there will be periodically, right, And so

879
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:36,560
Speaker 2: that's the reason for this quote unquote egalitarianism. Is the

880
00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:40,319
Speaker 2: wealthy plantation owners know that they need to keep these

881
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:43,440
Speaker 2: poor white guys on their side, like it makes.

882
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 4: Probably feel well to respond to that. I think it's

883
00:41:46,680 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 4: interesting you bring up the point about like the egalitarian

884
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:51,680
Speaker 4: and maybe they're not having room to exclude.

885
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:51,960
Speaker 3: The other white people.

886
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:55,439
Speaker 4: But I also think part of it is them being

887
00:41:56,080 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 4: I mean it is like, you know, the white supremacy,

888
00:41:58,200 --> 00:42:01,879
Speaker 4: but being surrounded by so many enslaved people and they

889
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:04,280
Speaker 4: see them as like background, They don't see them as people,

890
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:07,520
Speaker 4: so subconsciously they're gonna feel like, you know, when they

891
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 4: see another white person, like you're on my side, as

892
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:14,880
Speaker 4: opposed to a society where everyone's white, those like aristocratic

893
00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:18,919
Speaker 4: you know, one percenters look for someone else to put down. Yeah,

894
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:21,520
Speaker 4: they kind of have that space filled, and so they're

895
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:24,480
Speaker 4: gonna just be nicer. And yeah, I think that kind

896
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 4: of leads to that like superiority complex because you just

897
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:31,200
Speaker 4: get so used to feeling like a whole nother race

898
00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:33,360
Speaker 4: is the background to your supremacy.

899
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:36,760
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Well, and that also helps

900
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:39,960
Speaker 2: explain why these poorer white guys who don't own enslaved

901
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:42,799
Speaker 2: people themselves will defend the system so much. Is that

902
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 2: they still because of the system, they have a much

903
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 2: higher place in society than they otherwise would. Right, Like

904
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 2: the fact that the majority of the people are this

905
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,480
Speaker 2: kind of like background noise to the white population means

906
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:57,759
Speaker 2: that as a poor white you matter more like you

907
00:42:57,800 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 2: feel like it, and that will make you more inclin

908
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,200
Speaker 2: line to defend the system, right Like, that's also got

909
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 2: to be part of what's going on here.

910
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if their whole value quote unquote is managing

911
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 3: uprisings or you know, of people, but they're going to

912
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:13,040
Speaker 3: have to convince them.

913
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:14,840
Speaker 2: Managing just this system of human slavery.

914
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:15,080
Speaker 5: Yeah.

915
00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, they convince themselves that those people aren't people because

916
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:22,839
Speaker 4: that they're required to be there to maintain order, you.

917
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 3: Know, quote unquote.

918
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:26,880
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, and I should make it clear here that

919
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 2: at the time when he arrives, Jamaica is kind of changing,

920
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 2: But at the time he lands there, it's still the

921
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:35,760
Speaker 2: case that like, of that seven thousand or so person

922
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:38,839
Speaker 2: population of like free non white people in Jamaica, a

923
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:42,800
Speaker 2: good number of those people also own enslaved human beings

924
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:45,440
Speaker 2: and operate plantations. Right now, one of the things that

925
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 2: will change during the time Thomas is there is that

926
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 2: this number will get like cut down because the only

927
00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:54,240
Speaker 2: people who are able to be part of the island

928
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 2: legislature are white property owners, and they start voting to

929
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:01,920
Speaker 2: like restrict both political rights and reduce the amount of

930
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:04,480
Speaker 2: land that non white people can own during the time

931
00:44:04,480 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 2: that they're here. So even the ones, even the non

932
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 2: white people who are like part of the system of

933
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:11,279
Speaker 2: slavery are going to be like edged out of it

934
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:13,399
Speaker 2: over the time that Thomas is on the island by

935
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 2: like these white slave owners who actually get to like

936
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 2: manage things politically. Now, Thomas, like I said, he's going

937
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:24,360
Speaker 2: to live. He's going to survive his first year and

938
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:27,160
Speaker 2: then some and as a result, he's going to get treated.

939
00:44:27,440 --> 00:44:29,239
Speaker 2: He's going to be very valuable, right, He's going to

940
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 2: take some pretty significant leaps very quickly and social standing

941
00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 2: and an income. He proves to be such a competent

942
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 2: overseer that he's soon fielding offers for jobs from half

943
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:41,760
Speaker 2: of the plantations in his area, which means he's getting

944
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 2: steady raises. His boss has to pay him more every

945
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 2: year to keep him on because he always has places

946
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 2: he can go. This allows him to accrue a tidy

947
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 2: pile of ready cash, and he starts buying human beings

948
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 2: of his own and he will rint them. He doesn't

949
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:56,719
Speaker 2: own land yet, so he's buying people and then he's

950
00:44:56,719 --> 00:45:00,359
Speaker 2: renting them out to his bosses as laborers, right, and

951
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:04,359
Speaker 2: he's pocketing the money for their labor. And that's how

952
00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:07,200
Speaker 2: he basically sets up passive income for himself that is

953
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:09,720
Speaker 2: going to like allow him eventually to buy a plantation

954
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:11,800
Speaker 2: of his own, as he starts by like buying people

955
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:14,600
Speaker 2: and renting them back to his boss, and his boss

956
00:45:14,680 --> 00:45:17,840
Speaker 2: is always going to pay above average rates for the

957
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:20,799
Speaker 2: slave labor that Thomas rints him because his boss wants

958
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:23,360
Speaker 2: to keep Tomas happy, right, because Thomas can go in

959
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 2: where he fucking wants. So does that kind of make

960
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:28,240
Speaker 2: sense in terms of like why this would be appealing

961
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:30,279
Speaker 2: to someone like Thomas? You can survive that first year

962
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 2: of plague, right, Like he's doing better now than he'd

963
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:35,120
Speaker 2: ever have been able to do in England because he's

964
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:36,720
Speaker 2: buying and selling human beings.

965
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 4: And I mean, yeah, I know it's fucked up, but

966
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 4: it's also interesting that, I mean, like prostitution was such

967
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,279
Speaker 4: a big part of his earlier life because that is

968
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 4: like already, like you said, it's so transactional. There's already

969
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 4: this idea of like like buying you know, like a

970
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 4: night with someone, and then kind of escalating that to

971
00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 4: being like, well, and now he thinks I'm buying this

972
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 4: person's labor. Yeah, And I mean that's completely inhumane, but

973
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 4: I could see, like in how you're describing it, like

974
00:46:05,600 --> 00:46:10,080
Speaker 4: how this man's kind of thinking will jump to that extreme.

975
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:14,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it is obviously paying your uncle to take

976
00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:16,879
Speaker 2: care of you when you're like ten is different from

977
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 2: owning humans. Paying for sex is different from chattel slavery.

978
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:24,920
Speaker 2: But he has his whole life had this variant, transactional

979
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:28,560
Speaker 2: understanding of what human be other people are right, that is,

980
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:30,400
Speaker 2: that has been with him, like since he was a

981
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:33,040
Speaker 2: little kid. That has to have some sort of impact

982
00:46:33,160 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 2: on like why you are this way?

983
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:36,200
Speaker 3: So.

984
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:39,440
Speaker 2: James Robertson, in his article on Jamaica during this period

985
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 2: of time, describes this like initial mass death of new

986
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 2: arrivals from Europe as seasoning, and one of the reasons

987
00:46:46,160 --> 00:46:49,719
Speaker 2: he theorizes Thistlewood survived his period of seasoning is that

988
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 2: he's not getting drunk every night. He's like a nerd.

989
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:55,120
Speaker 2: He's spending all of his free time writing in his

990
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:58,240
Speaker 2: diary and journaling about the weather and like reading books

991
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:01,799
Speaker 2: and so he's not just like all the constantly while sick. Right,

992
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:04,160
Speaker 2: someone stole his liquor. That may have saved his life.

993
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also all the arsenic you drank probably.

994
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, all that made it so that nothing else could

995
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 2: survive it. But that's right, everybody, try drinking arsenic yourself.

996
00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:18,560
Speaker 2: See if it makes you stronger. Who knows? You know

997
00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 2: our if? I think, but we could get RFK to

998
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:25,919
Speaker 2: endorse arsenic drinking arsenic? Oh God, like that's that's that's

999
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,600
Speaker 2: medicinal now, So Tom.

1000
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 3: You should do it.

1001
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 2: You should do your second ad Oh should I? Okay? Yeah,

1002
00:47:33,160 --> 00:47:43,120
Speaker 2: well here's another AD break and we're back. There's not

1003
00:47:43,200 --> 00:47:46,200
Speaker 2: a good way to segue into this next part. But

1004
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:48,640
Speaker 2: the uh this is the first time, in December of

1005
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:51,200
Speaker 2: seventeen fifty, about five months after landing on the island,

1006
00:47:51,680 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 2: is the first time that Thomas writes about committing sexual

1007
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 2: assault on an enslaved person who works on the ranch

1008
00:47:57,719 --> 00:48:01,000
Speaker 2: where he's working. And he writes this in his like

1009
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:05,399
Speaker 2: Latin shorthand, and basically the translation is that he he's

1010
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 2: slept with this enslaved woman named Sylvia, who's a black

1011
00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 2: woman from the Ebo Forest region of modern day Cameroon.

1012
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:15,080
Speaker 2: In silv right, he writes that he like he lay

1013
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:19,600
Speaker 2: with Sylvia in silv and silv is like a that's

1014
00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:22,879
Speaker 2: a shortened version of the Latin word for forest. Right,

1015
00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:27,280
Speaker 2: So he's kind of writing, he's kind of writing about

1016
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 2: this sex crime he's committed, almost as like a like

1017
00:48:31,719 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 2: a Latin couplet, right, Like he's he's he's not just

1018
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:37,400
Speaker 2: writing about this thing that he's done, but he's clearly

1019
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 2: he's clearly drawn to this woman named Sylvia because her

1020
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:44,759
Speaker 2: name is similar to the name of like this Roman goddess. Uh,

1021
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:48,520
Speaker 2: this Roman term for like the wild part of the world,

1022
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:51,880
Speaker 2: and this Roman term for like a goddess. Right, Like

1023
00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:55,680
Speaker 2: it's this he's making these weird references in his diary,

1024
00:48:55,840 --> 00:48:58,800
Speaker 2: like these aren't just exploitation logs. But he's he's almost

1025
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:02,560
Speaker 2: like showing off his noge of like classical education while

1026
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:06,759
Speaker 2: he's doing this too. And it's kind of unclear to

1027
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:08,960
Speaker 2: me why he does this. I've read a couple of

1028
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:12,839
Speaker 2: different theories as to why he feels drawn to do

1029
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:16,280
Speaker 2: this while he's writing about these things. In her paper,

1030
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:22,000
Speaker 2: Redacting Desire, Elizabeth Polka theorizes quote. Thistlewood structured his sexual

1031
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,799
Speaker 2: exploitation Logs as an entry embedded within an entry, a

1032
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:27,319
Speaker 2: private subspace into which he placed the record of his

1033
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 2: sexual activity. If Thistlewood's ten thousand pages of diaries were

1034
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 2: visualized as an architectural space, such as a domestic home,

1035
00:49:34,360 --> 00:49:37,080
Speaker 2: the sexual Exploitation Logs would be a locked drawer in

1036
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:40,360
Speaker 2: Thistlewood's bedroom dresser, where his Latin coding functions as a

1037
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:44,280
Speaker 2: locking mechanism. Within this private space, Thistlewood placed walls around

1038
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 2: sexual encounters, employing documentation to codify and order the sex

1039
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:52,360
Speaker 2: act within a system of concealment, which is similar to

1040
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:55,320
Speaker 2: kind of what you were saying earlier, right, Like he's

1041
00:49:55,400 --> 00:49:57,879
Speaker 2: locking this away for anyone. That's part of why he's

1042
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:02,080
Speaker 2: making these obscure references to like Roman gods in this

1043
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,200
Speaker 2: entry log about a sex crime, is so that the

1044
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:08,680
Speaker 2: only other people who will understand what I've done, truly

1045
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:12,279
Speaker 2: are other educated white men of a scientific bent, and

1046
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:15,240
Speaker 2: they'll understand that what I was doing wasn't a sex crime,

1047
00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 2: it was an act of science, because that's how he

1048
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:20,440
Speaker 2: writes about this. Yeah, well, I.

1049
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 4: Wonder if it's like, like you said, it's more like

1050
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 4: in self defense, Like it's I don't know if he

1051
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 4: really believes it, because if he's already putting it into

1052
00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:30,120
Speaker 4: that box, like literally right you say he boxes it off,

1053
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:33,520
Speaker 4: there's that feeling already like describes it. Yeah, he needs

1054
00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:37,200
Speaker 4: to separate it. And then on top of that, it's

1055
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:39,080
Speaker 4: like you're kind of what you said he's writing and

1056
00:50:39,120 --> 00:50:40,719
Speaker 4: couple it makes me think of like, you know, you

1057
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:43,880
Speaker 4: kind of code switch when you're if you're writing, like

1058
00:50:44,239 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 4: people analyze it you're lying or not. Like maybe there's

1059
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:49,759
Speaker 4: a piece where he switches into like he thinks he's

1060
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 4: intellectualizing it, but really it's because he feels some sort

1061
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:56,239
Speaker 4: of guilt and then it's trying to connect it or

1062
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:59,360
Speaker 4: dissociate or you know, be like actually, I'm you know,

1063
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 4: kind of going into this intellectual place when I'm doing this,

1064
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:06,800
Speaker 4: But really it's it's a reaction to his own feelings.

1065
00:51:06,840 --> 00:51:09,840
Speaker 3: I mean, it's zydiary effical. He's not needing to defend

1066
00:51:09,880 --> 00:51:11,400
Speaker 3: himself to anyone.

1067
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:14,320
Speaker 2: Right and the fact that because it can be both

1068
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 2: right where he wants to hide this from anyone other

1069
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:20,359
Speaker 2: than the people he thinks might understand why he's doing

1070
00:51:20,360 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 2: what he's done. But that implies that he understands there's

1071
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:26,919
Speaker 2: something unacceptable to regular people about what he's doing.

1072
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:29,280
Speaker 3: Well, could he be trying to defend himself to himself

1073
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:30,280
Speaker 3: like almost.

1074
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:35,800
Speaker 4: Like possibly, yeah, you know, logging his Yeah.

1075
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:37,560
Speaker 2: Like what I'm doing is because he's he is a naturalist, right,

1076
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:39,640
Speaker 2: and that is that those are kind of the early

1077
00:51:39,760 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 2: scientists in this period of time, is like people who

1078
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 2: are going on in the natural world and they're taking

1079
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:49,760
Speaker 2: this is Eventually guys like more rigorous and better versions

1080
00:51:49,800 --> 00:51:51,560
Speaker 2: of this are going to you know, produce people like

1081
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 2: Charles Darwin. Right, But this this basic idea that like

1082
00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:56,879
Speaker 2: you go out and you're taking notes. That's why he's

1083
00:51:56,920 --> 00:51:59,120
Speaker 2: taking notes on the climate every day too, on the

1084
00:51:59,120 --> 00:52:03,319
Speaker 2: wather he's experiencing. Is there's this early scientific understanding that like, well,

1085
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:06,520
Speaker 2: part of science is just documenting what you see, right,

1086
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:10,040
Speaker 2: and so he is part of what he's doing is

1087
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:13,839
Speaker 2: walling off these sexual experiences and documenting them as if

1088
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:16,400
Speaker 2: he's doing scientific research. And I think you're right that

1089
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:19,440
Speaker 2: it's part of it maybe a defense mechanism where he's

1090
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:23,919
Speaker 2: trying to make this unacceptable thing acceptable, and there's maybe

1091
00:52:23,920 --> 00:52:27,160
Speaker 2: this level of knowledge that that will not work for

1092
00:52:27,360 --> 00:52:29,279
Speaker 2: a lot of people, so he has to kind of

1093
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 2: code it for the people that he sees is like him,

1094
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:35,760
Speaker 2: these other scientists. One of the reasons he uses Latin

1095
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:39,520
Speaker 2: probably is to connect his because that's the scientific language, right,

1096
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:42,840
Speaker 2: And this also connects the work he's doing to the

1097
00:52:42,920 --> 00:52:47,439
Speaker 2: documentation of a scientist he greatly admired, Carl Linnaeus, who

1098
00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:49,680
Speaker 2: is a Swedish biologist and the person who created like

1099
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:53,000
Speaker 2: the modern taxonomy system how we name species is because

1100
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:57,520
Speaker 2: of Linnaeus, right, and during his time in Jamaica. Part

1101
00:52:57,560 --> 00:52:59,360
Speaker 2: of why and part of why this is relevant to

1102
00:52:59,360 --> 00:53:03,840
Speaker 2: Linaeus is Thomas is not only committing these sex crimes

1103
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:06,760
Speaker 2: on enslaved people out of like some sense of desire

1104
00:53:06,840 --> 00:53:09,640
Speaker 2: or even a personal need for power. There's a financial

1105
00:53:09,640 --> 00:53:13,240
Speaker 2: motivation here, because if you get a person you own pregnant,

1106
00:53:13,640 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 2: the baby is your property. You can sell them when

1107
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:20,720
Speaker 2: they're an adult. And he will repeatedly over his life.

1108
00:53:21,200 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 2: And part of what he's doing here is keeping notes

1109
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 2: as to who he's sleeping with, so he can document

1110
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:30,560
Speaker 2: the parentage of different people that he's going to own

1111
00:53:30,640 --> 00:53:34,279
Speaker 2: and sell, right. And he sees this scientifically in the

1112
00:53:34,320 --> 00:53:36,799
Speaker 2: same way as people who are like breeding livestock. Right,

1113
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 2: that's what this is to him. Right, that's horrible, but

1114
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:41,879
Speaker 2: that is how Thomas thinks about this, Right.

1115
00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 4: That's why, like that totally changes like what I was

1116
00:53:45,080 --> 00:53:47,439
Speaker 4: saying before, because yeah, it definitely makes it feel more

1117
00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:49,360
Speaker 4: like he's just logging his property.

1118
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:53,279
Speaker 2: I think there's a few things. This isn't a simple thing. Really,

1119
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:57,480
Speaker 2: it's a lot in here, right, But that's part of

1120
00:53:57,520 --> 00:53:58,640
Speaker 2: what he's doing here.

1121
00:53:58,719 --> 00:54:00,880
Speaker 4: And he doesn't see them as is I mean, I

1122
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:04,600
Speaker 4: guess it's probably true for most people of this time,

1123
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:07,480
Speaker 4: but just hearing us, like, so he doesn't see them

1124
00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:09,640
Speaker 4: as his children, no, right.

1125
00:54:09,520 --> 00:54:14,760
Speaker 2: I mean he does a person. He knows they literally

1126
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 2: are biologically his children, but he does not see them

1127
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 2: as human beings. Fully. I think that's probably accurate. Like

1128
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:25,640
Speaker 2: all people living in these situations, there's a lot of

1129
00:54:25,719 --> 00:54:30,200
Speaker 2: weird relationships here that are all deeply unequal and fucked

1130
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:33,600
Speaker 2: up and also like difficult to categorize and understand. We

1131
00:54:33,640 --> 00:54:37,239
Speaker 2: will talk about that some. But yeah, part of what

1132
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:40,120
Speaker 2: he's doing here is like writing about what he's like

1133
00:54:40,160 --> 00:54:43,560
Speaker 2: these what's happening, as if he's like breeding livestock, that's

1134
00:54:43,600 --> 00:54:46,920
Speaker 2: an aspect of like what he's doing here, and you know,

1135
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 2: beyond that, he's also he's his era's equivalent of like

1136
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:52,960
Speaker 2: a nerd, right, he's into science is like a cool

1137
00:54:53,040 --> 00:54:56,920
Speaker 2: thing for a chunk of like the educated aristocracy. It's

1138
00:54:56,920 --> 00:55:00,480
Speaker 2: a thing you do as like a hobby, right, And

1139
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 2: so's he has this sense of like, I'm not quite

1140
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:05,840
Speaker 2: as good as a lot of other people because he

1141
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:08,799
Speaker 2: doesn't grow up super rich, and he doesn't he's not

1142
00:55:08,880 --> 00:55:12,000
Speaker 2: fit for high society where he comes from. And so

1143
00:55:12,360 --> 00:55:14,680
Speaker 2: this is kind of how he tries to fit himself

1144
00:55:14,719 --> 00:55:18,560
Speaker 2: in right, is by framing himself and presenting himself to

1145
00:55:18,640 --> 00:55:22,359
Speaker 2: others as a man of science. There's a really good

1146
00:55:22,480 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 2: article on this called Thomas Thistlewood's Libidinal Linnaean Project for

1147
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:30,480
Speaker 2: Small Acts Journal by Heather Vermulian, and she proposes a

1148
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:35,239
Speaker 2: likely symbolic explanation for why Thomas wrote about this very

1149
00:55:35,280 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 2: first sex crime on the island the way that he did.

1150
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:41,160
Speaker 2: Thistlewood may have attend intended more than a play on

1151
00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:43,520
Speaker 2: words with his description of the rape of Sylvia in

1152
00:55:43,600 --> 00:55:46,520
Speaker 2: the silv His choice to attack this woman in particular

1153
00:55:46,520 --> 00:55:49,400
Speaker 2: may have carried symbolic weight, as Robert Pogue Harrison writes

1154
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:51,920
Speaker 2: the traditional legends of Rome's foundation tell us that the

1155
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:54,480
Speaker 2: city was born of the forests, but they also suggest

1156
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:56,960
Speaker 2: that Rome had had to turn against its matrix in

1157
00:55:57,040 --> 00:56:01,239
Speaker 2: order to fulfill its destiny. According to Livy, Harrison explains, Romulus,

1158
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:04,160
Speaker 2: the founder of Rome, belonged to the Sylvian family line,

1159
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 2: as is the case in many foundation myths, the Rape

1160
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,200
Speaker 2: of the Sabines, the Rape of Lucretia. It is sexual

1161
00:56:09,239 --> 00:56:11,880
Speaker 2: violence that sets the story in motion. Romulus and his

1162
00:56:11,920 --> 00:56:14,359
Speaker 2: twin brother Remus were born when Mars, the Roman god

1163
00:56:14,400 --> 00:56:17,840
Speaker 2: of war, raped the vestal virgin Raya Silvia. Viewed in

1164
00:56:17,880 --> 00:56:20,960
Speaker 2: this light, this Wilwood perpetuated his initial act of terrestrial

1165
00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:23,640
Speaker 2: rape against an enslaved woman whose name evokes a spirit

1166
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:27,319
Speaker 2: or goddess of the wood, targeted for Roman conquest, as

1167
00:56:27,320 --> 00:56:30,359
Speaker 2: well as Reya Silvia, targeted for divine rape. His act

1168
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 2: also conjures the very manner in which Romulus populated Rome,

1169
00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:36,480
Speaker 2: by capturing women from nearby cities and forcing them into

1170
00:56:36,520 --> 00:56:39,600
Speaker 2: relation with Rome's founding men. Thisilwood's rape of Sylvia may

1171
00:56:39,600 --> 00:56:43,600
Speaker 2: well participate in this classic genealogy of mystified sexual violence.

1172
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:48,960
Speaker 2: Ambiguous parentage, colonization and captivity, and the imperial domesticating of

1173
00:56:49,080 --> 00:56:53,359
Speaker 2: unruly forested land as a sign of progress. Right, So

1174
00:56:53,480 --> 00:56:57,000
Speaker 2: this is he sees this as part of this very

1175
00:56:57,160 --> 00:57:01,839
Speaker 2: scientific and high minded colonial pride. England is colonizing and

1176
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:05,040
Speaker 2: civilizing the wilderness and making it better. And these sex

1177
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:08,720
Speaker 2: crimes I'm committing are a part of this scientific effort

1178
00:57:08,840 --> 00:57:13,360
Speaker 2: to improve via not just like you know, by developing

1179
00:57:13,360 --> 00:57:16,320
Speaker 2: the land, but by inserting my DNA into these populations.

1180
00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:20,920
Speaker 2: That's how he's thinking about this, right, I mean, because that's.

1181
00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:21,280
Speaker 3: Like what I mean.

1182
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:25,840
Speaker 4: I can see like, I mean that very well written interpretation.

1183
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:31,480
Speaker 3: But is he is he really like that? Like I

1184
00:57:31,520 --> 00:57:33,240
Speaker 3: don't want to say com smart, but is he really

1185
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:34,800
Speaker 3: like thinking that deep?

1186
00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:38,480
Speaker 2: Or this would have been all of these ancient Roman

1187
00:57:38,520 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 2: myths and all of this knowledge of Latin. This was

1188
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:43,320
Speaker 2: part of a normal education for a man of his

1189
00:57:43,640 --> 00:57:48,040
Speaker 2: stature at this time, you got an intensely detailed classical education,

1190
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:53,240
Speaker 2: right because in part the British Empire is portraying itself

1191
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:57,400
Speaker 2: as in this line of civilizing imperial western forces, right

1192
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 2: these and in this line of like because the Greeks

1193
00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:03,880
Speaker 2: and the Romans are very much admired for their understanding

1194
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:06,400
Speaker 2: of the natural world right and for the their their

1195
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:08,600
Speaker 2: power and command over it in an area in which

1196
00:58:08,600 --> 00:58:11,240
Speaker 2: that was seen as having been less common elsewhere, and

1197
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:13,760
Speaker 2: part of why Latin is still the knowledge the language

1198
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:17,000
Speaker 2: of science at the day. And it's also Thistlewood doesn't

1199
00:58:17,120 --> 00:58:18,600
Speaker 2: he doesn't want to see himself as just a guy

1200
00:58:18,680 --> 00:58:21,800
Speaker 2: trying to get rich and committing horrible crimes against other

1201
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:24,880
Speaker 2: human beings. He wants to see himself as part of

1202
00:58:25,440 --> 00:58:28,760
Speaker 2: this noble global endeavor to civilize the world.

1203
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:30,400
Speaker 3: And that's mythological.

1204
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:35,440
Speaker 4: It's very yeah, that there is a parallel to what

1205
00:58:35,480 --> 00:58:37,240
Speaker 4: I see, I mean what I see happening now with

1206
00:58:37,320 --> 00:58:39,880
Speaker 4: a lot of white supremacy because they talk a lot

1207
00:58:39,880 --> 00:58:44,920
Speaker 4: about classical literature and referring to classical like and you know,

1208
00:58:45,200 --> 00:58:49,360
Speaker 4: biblical memes or imagery. I know, like Hillsdale College.

1209
00:58:49,080 --> 00:58:51,920
Speaker 3: Is one that you know, very.

1210
00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:56,080
Speaker 4: Conservative and they really focus on teaching classical, classical stories

1211
00:58:56,080 --> 00:58:58,320
Speaker 4: to children, and very much in the same way you're

1212
00:58:58,320 --> 00:59:02,680
Speaker 4: talking about sort of like upholding these images that are yes,

1213
00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:04,600
Speaker 4: you know, eurocentric.

1214
00:59:03,880 --> 00:59:07,040
Speaker 2: Myths, and it's it's this, this is a this is

1215
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 2: a massive part. This is not just a part of fascism.

1216
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:12,560
Speaker 2: But this is a part of selling any fucked up

1217
00:59:12,600 --> 00:59:14,640
Speaker 2: thing to young men, as you convince them they're doing

1218
00:59:14,680 --> 00:59:18,120
Speaker 2: something great. Right. This thing that we could just say

1219
00:59:18,200 --> 00:59:21,440
Speaker 2: is you giving into your base impulses is also heroic

1220
00:59:21,760 --> 00:59:23,960
Speaker 2: and it puts you in line with divinity and you're

1221
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:27,560
Speaker 2: part of this great civilizing mission. Right. We've been telling

1222
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:30,280
Speaker 2: young men that in every society that's ever existed to

1223
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:32,880
Speaker 2: get him to do fucked up shit, right, And that

1224
00:59:32,920 --> 00:59:34,960
Speaker 2: doesn't by the way, that's not to say, oh, Thistlewood's

1225
00:59:34,960 --> 00:59:38,200
Speaker 2: just a victim, no, no, no, no, no. He is choosing

1226
00:59:38,320 --> 00:59:42,920
Speaker 2: to find a justification for the cruel, violent, vicious things

1227
00:59:43,200 --> 00:59:47,000
Speaker 2: that he wants to do and that he increasingly finds appealing,

1228
00:59:47,080 --> 00:59:49,400
Speaker 2: because he becomes a worse and worse person the more

1229
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:52,640
Speaker 2: he gives into this, and that means you need to

1230
00:59:52,640 --> 00:59:56,600
Speaker 2: come up with increasingly like lofty intellectual justifications for the

1231
00:59:56,640 --> 00:59:58,000
Speaker 2: horrors you're committing. Right.

1232
00:59:58,040 --> 00:59:58,320
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1233
00:59:58,360 --> 01:00:00,400
Speaker 4: Well, to be clear, I know there's there been times

1234
01:00:00,400 --> 01:00:02,520
Speaker 4: where I'm like, yeah, oh, that's interesting he said that.

1235
01:00:02,760 --> 01:00:05,280
Speaker 4: I understand that for the listeners who don't know me, like,

1236
01:00:05,360 --> 01:00:09,080
Speaker 4: I'm very much like, oh yeah, there's no justifation from

1237
01:00:09,120 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 4: the beginning to the end, like this leg owner, I'm

1238
01:00:11,440 --> 01:00:14,360
Speaker 4: already like, yeah, not trying to be like justify it.

1239
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:16,840
Speaker 4: But it is so interesting to me to dive into

1240
01:00:16,880 --> 01:00:19,720
Speaker 4: like the details, because it is like why are we

1241
01:00:19,800 --> 01:00:22,680
Speaker 4: still here in some ways, like years later, why are

1242
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:24,840
Speaker 4: we still seeing people like this? I mean not in

1243
01:00:24,880 --> 01:00:27,160
Speaker 4: the exact way, but how does it happen?

1244
01:00:27,280 --> 01:00:27,480
Speaker 3: You know?

1245
01:00:27,800 --> 01:00:30,760
Speaker 2: I think this is an important half not even half,

1246
01:00:30,760 --> 01:00:32,720
Speaker 2: but this is an important part of the story. Is

1247
01:00:33,120 --> 01:00:36,800
Speaker 2: not how they lived with themselves, but how they felt

1248
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:39,240
Speaker 2: good about themselves for doing this, and.

1249
01:00:39,160 --> 01:00:42,480
Speaker 3: How they justify it in their own world that they're heroes.

1250
01:00:43,080 --> 01:00:45,360
Speaker 2: And yeah he is, but he is. He is literally

1251
01:00:45,520 --> 01:00:48,480
Speaker 2: raping civilization into these people. That's how he thought about

1252
01:00:48,480 --> 01:00:50,720
Speaker 2: it in a very literal way in a lot of

1253
01:00:50,880 --> 01:00:52,840
Speaker 2: like I mean, he wouldn't have called it rape, but

1254
01:00:52,920 --> 01:00:59,040
Speaker 2: like that's what he's doing, you know. And and he

1255
01:00:59,120 --> 01:01:02,040
Speaker 2: also writes repeatedly about a lot of these people not

1256
01:01:02,160 --> 01:01:04,760
Speaker 2: wanting it right. He will write basically they did, they

1257
01:01:04,800 --> 01:01:07,200
Speaker 2: weren't into it, or they weren't like he will add

1258
01:01:07,240 --> 01:01:09,600
Speaker 2: that he takes notes on that sort of thing too.

1259
01:01:09,680 --> 01:01:11,360
Speaker 2: That's part of the documentation.

1260
01:01:12,360 --> 01:01:15,720
Speaker 4: Does he describe the like sexy had with not in

1261
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:19,280
Speaker 4: detention women he dated, like, no, that's.

1262
01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 2: Not what.

1263
01:01:20,840 --> 01:01:23,000
Speaker 3: Did he describe the sexy had with women that.

1264
01:01:22,920 --> 01:01:26,880
Speaker 4: Were like dating differently than the woman he raped, or

1265
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:29,480
Speaker 4: they're kind of all seen as like objects.

1266
01:01:29,640 --> 01:01:30,800
Speaker 2: We don't get any of that.

1267
01:01:31,120 --> 01:01:31,680
Speaker 3: We don't know.

1268
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:35,720
Speaker 2: We know because of things that little bits side bits

1269
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:37,440
Speaker 2: of his life that we get. We know that he

1270
01:01:37,520 --> 01:01:40,160
Speaker 2: got a woman who was roughly at his social level,

1271
01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:42,840
Speaker 2: pregnant when he was younger, and that the relationship didn't

1272
01:01:42,920 --> 01:01:46,920
Speaker 2: work out. Right. We know that he never writes about

1273
01:01:47,320 --> 01:01:52,080
Speaker 2: anything that could be termed an equivalent relationship between two

1274
01:01:52,120 --> 01:01:55,040
Speaker 2: people choosing to be like, right, he writes about paying

1275
01:01:55,240 --> 01:01:57,680
Speaker 2: for sex and you know, I don't know about the

1276
01:01:57,720 --> 01:01:59,640
Speaker 2: ethics of where you want to put the ethics of

1277
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:01,960
Speaker 2: sex work in seventeen hundreds London, but it's different than

1278
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:04,479
Speaker 2: what he's doing in Jamaica. And he writes about sex

1279
01:02:04,560 --> 01:02:07,400
Speaker 2: crimes that he commits in Jamaica. Right, he does. Right,

1280
01:02:07,560 --> 01:02:10,200
Speaker 2: there is an enslaved woman with whom he has a

1281
01:02:10,320 --> 01:02:13,560
Speaker 2: long relationship that is obviously not a consensual relationship, but

1282
01:02:13,640 --> 01:02:15,720
Speaker 2: he writes about it as if it is because that's

1283
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:18,840
Speaker 2: his interpretation. That's how he feels about it. We get

1284
01:02:18,880 --> 01:02:21,280
Speaker 2: a little of that, and it's still pretty brutal because

1285
01:02:21,280 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 2: he's still like I mean, yeah, we'll talk unfortunately about

1286
01:02:25,040 --> 01:02:28,000
Speaker 2: too much of that. But in January of seventeen fifty three,

1287
01:02:28,240 --> 01:02:32,680
Speaker 2: this Thistlewood yeah sorry, takes on his most prestigious job

1288
01:02:32,800 --> 01:02:35,760
Speaker 2: yet he gets made overseer of the large and profitable

1289
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:39,120
Speaker 2: Egypt Plantation. This is still in Jamaica, it's just called Egypt.

1290
01:02:39,520 --> 01:02:42,200
Speaker 2: He's paid the princely sum of sixty pounds sterling a

1291
01:02:42,280 --> 01:02:45,920
Speaker 2: year for his labor. Immediately after he moves to the plantation,

1292
01:02:46,080 --> 01:02:48,640
Speaker 2: he commits another sex crime on another young enslaved woman

1293
01:02:48,720 --> 01:02:52,880
Speaker 2: named Flora, replicating his Sylvia silver word play by mentioning

1294
01:02:52,920 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 2: her within several lines of a passage discussing the plantation's

1295
01:02:56,360 --> 01:03:00,360
Speaker 2: Flora right, and he writes that he paid her four

1296
01:03:00,480 --> 01:03:05,000
Speaker 2: bits after doing this. And this is something you get periodically,

1297
01:03:05,240 --> 01:03:09,880
Speaker 2: some of these fortune to No, it's a type of currency.

1298
01:03:10,200 --> 01:03:15,280
Speaker 2: It's two t's. Unfortunately, well, I don't know, probably yeah,

1299
01:03:15,280 --> 01:03:18,160
Speaker 2: I don't know where to take that. But it's a bit.

1300
01:03:19,080 --> 01:03:21,520
Speaker 2: You may have heard of like this used especially like

1301
01:03:21,600 --> 01:03:24,440
Speaker 2: pirate literature, Like a bit is a if you've heard

1302
01:03:24,440 --> 01:03:27,080
Speaker 2: of a piece of eight, like Spanish pieces of eight,

1303
01:03:27,240 --> 01:03:29,320
Speaker 2: Like that's a Spanish reel, is a piece of eight,

1304
01:03:29,800 --> 01:03:31,720
Speaker 2: or is like it's eight pieces of eight and you

1305
01:03:31,760 --> 01:03:34,400
Speaker 2: would like break off the little piece. That's like pirate money.

1306
01:03:34,440 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 2: It was a Spanish reality, and a bit was equivalent

1307
01:03:37,640 --> 01:03:41,600
Speaker 2: to like one eighth of a Spanish reel, right, which

1308
01:03:41,680 --> 01:03:44,560
Speaker 2: is again the money in pirate movies. As a general rule,

1309
01:03:44,920 --> 01:03:47,480
Speaker 2: So four bits that he gives this woman is half

1310
01:03:47,560 --> 01:03:49,439
Speaker 2: of a piece of eight, and depending on the source,

1311
01:03:49,480 --> 01:03:52,000
Speaker 2: that's equivalent from like fifty cents to like one thousand

1312
01:03:52,040 --> 01:03:55,840
Speaker 2: dollars in modern money, because it's really not easy to

1313
01:03:55,960 --> 01:03:58,560
Speaker 2: actually draw an equivalent based on the context. I think

1314
01:03:58,600 --> 01:04:00,360
Speaker 2: this is the equivalent of him giving her like five

1315
01:04:00,480 --> 01:04:01,400
Speaker 2: or ten dollars.

1316
01:04:01,440 --> 01:04:05,760
Speaker 4: Right, he's giving that's that And that wasn't something he normal.

1317
01:04:05,800 --> 01:04:07,280
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not a standard practice he.

1318
01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:10,520
Speaker 2: Did sometimes he wasn't different time and it Yeah, and

1319
01:04:10,600 --> 01:04:16,880
Speaker 2: I don't think I don't think like I think some

1320
01:04:17,040 --> 01:04:19,280
Speaker 2: of it is that maybe it makes him feel better,

1321
01:04:19,880 --> 01:04:21,640
Speaker 2: like this is more like what he was doing with

1322
01:04:21,760 --> 01:04:24,600
Speaker 2: the sex workers in England than what it is, which

1323
01:04:24,680 --> 01:04:26,640
Speaker 2: is a sex crime. And I think some of it

1324
01:04:26,800 --> 01:04:29,040
Speaker 2: is that this just makes it easier for him.

1325
01:04:29,200 --> 01:04:32,240
Speaker 3: Right, Like it was there a world where there are

1326
01:04:32,880 --> 01:04:37,120
Speaker 3: where there were also people doing like sex work on

1327
01:04:37,160 --> 01:04:37,520
Speaker 3: the side.

1328
01:04:38,560 --> 01:04:41,000
Speaker 2: Yes, like that, that's that's a that's a thing too,

1329
01:04:41,160 --> 01:04:43,320
Speaker 2: is that like if your flora, maybe this is how

1330
01:04:43,360 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 2: you make money because there's not a lot of options

1331
01:04:45,800 --> 01:04:47,480
Speaker 2: open to you to do that. We like, we really

1332
01:04:47,560 --> 01:04:51,120
Speaker 2: don't know how this conversation starts. Like we know that

1333
01:04:51,240 --> 01:04:53,840
Speaker 2: this is a sex crime just because of the slave

1334
01:04:54,080 --> 01:04:57,560
Speaker 2: and not free relationship, right, but we don't know if

1335
01:04:57,640 --> 01:04:59,520
Speaker 2: she would have seen herself as like, well, this is

1336
01:04:59,560 --> 01:05:01,480
Speaker 2: the way for me to make money, right, there's not

1337
01:05:01,560 --> 01:05:06,040
Speaker 2: a lot more or if he just assaulted her and

1338
01:05:06,120 --> 01:05:08,240
Speaker 2: then threw some money on the ground, like both of

1339
01:05:08,320 --> 01:05:10,640
Speaker 2: the either of those could be the case. There's never

1340
01:05:10,880 --> 01:05:13,320
Speaker 2: any way to know. Yeah, and all of them are bad.

1341
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:15,680
Speaker 2: It's just that we don't really know what was happening here.

1342
01:05:17,320 --> 01:05:19,680
Speaker 2: That said, it is worth it. He starts after floor,

1343
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:23,080
Speaker 2: he picks out another African born and slave field worker,

1344
01:05:23,200 --> 01:05:26,440
Speaker 2: and he starts what he described as a relationship with her, right,

1345
01:05:26,520 --> 01:05:29,520
Speaker 2: and he describes Ginny as consenting to the liaison. Obviously

1346
01:05:29,600 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 2: she didn't have choice here, but it's worth exploring what

1347
01:05:32,760 --> 01:05:35,360
Speaker 2: she would have seen as the benefits of a relationship

1348
01:05:35,520 --> 01:05:37,760
Speaker 2: like this, because that does paint a bleaker story. And

1349
01:05:37,840 --> 01:05:40,960
Speaker 2: we get some hint as to that in Robertson's article,

1350
01:05:41,000 --> 01:05:43,480
Speaker 2: because he writes that the tour together for nearly a year,

1351
01:05:43,600 --> 01:05:47,520
Speaker 2: but quote, she increasingly alienated his affections by heavy handed

1352
01:05:47,520 --> 01:05:50,960
Speaker 2: attempts to intervene when he assigned punishments, bringing a knife

1353
01:05:51,000 --> 01:05:54,120
Speaker 2: to bed proof the final straw. So what I take

1354
01:05:54,160 --> 01:06:01,760
Speaker 2: from this she did, che did and Jenny any quote Again,

1355
01:06:01,880 --> 01:06:04,080
Speaker 2: I use the word choice loosely here, but one of

1356
01:06:04,120 --> 01:06:06,880
Speaker 2: the few choices available to her was if I get

1357
01:06:06,920 --> 01:06:09,920
Speaker 2: in this guy's good graces and pretend that I like him,

1358
01:06:10,320 --> 01:06:12,520
Speaker 2: the next time he tries to beat one of my friends,

1359
01:06:12,640 --> 01:06:16,200
Speaker 2: I can convince him to stop, right, And that's.

1360
01:06:16,400 --> 01:06:23,080
Speaker 4: Eventually yeah, yeah, yes, he's already interested in her. If

1361
01:06:23,120 --> 01:06:24,640
Speaker 4: she refuses, it's gonna be worse.

1362
01:06:24,680 --> 01:06:26,480
Speaker 3: So like kind of puts up.

1363
01:06:26,680 --> 01:06:29,160
Speaker 2: Maybe I can use this position to help some people.

1364
01:06:29,440 --> 01:06:32,960
Speaker 2: And Thistlewood gets annoyed at her right because she's yelling

1365
01:06:33,000 --> 01:06:35,800
Speaker 2: at him when he beats people. Uh, And eventually she

1366
01:06:36,000 --> 01:06:38,919
Speaker 2: decides I might need to kill this guy, and maybe

1367
01:06:38,960 --> 01:06:41,520
Speaker 2: I can't convince him to not be so much of it,

1368
01:06:41,600 --> 01:06:44,000
Speaker 2: and so she brings a knife to bed and he

1369
01:06:44,160 --> 01:06:46,760
Speaker 2: catches her, right, and this is the end of whatever

1370
01:06:46,800 --> 01:06:50,040
Speaker 2: you want to call this, like very very bleak thing, right,

1371
01:06:50,120 --> 01:06:52,120
Speaker 2: But that does it tells us a lot about how

1372
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:55,120
Speaker 2: someone in Ginny's position may have thought about what was

1373
01:06:55,160 --> 01:06:57,360
Speaker 2: happening as like, well, maybe this is an opportunity to

1374
01:06:57,400 --> 01:07:01,000
Speaker 2: gain some control over my life and my friends' lives.

1375
01:07:00,960 --> 01:07:05,520
Speaker 3: Right, And what does he do when he finds the

1376
01:07:05,920 --> 01:07:06,920
Speaker 3: knife and he.

1377
01:07:07,000 --> 01:07:09,520
Speaker 2: Kicks her out? Basically, I mean she gets punished for this.

1378
01:07:10,320 --> 01:07:12,640
Speaker 2: She was almost certainly would have been would have been

1379
01:07:12,680 --> 01:07:15,919
Speaker 2: like whipped for this, and there were to talk about

1380
01:07:16,400 --> 01:07:16,800
Speaker 2: worst but.

1381
01:07:17,080 --> 01:07:18,720
Speaker 3: She killed them. She should have just killed him.

1382
01:07:19,240 --> 01:07:22,760
Speaker 2: I don't think she got the chance. I know, Yeah, yeah,

1383
01:07:23,120 --> 01:07:24,760
Speaker 2: it does seem like what she wanted.

1384
01:07:24,560 --> 01:07:27,280
Speaker 4: To because it's like, yeah, even if she could, she

1385
01:07:27,360 --> 01:07:29,840
Speaker 4: would get in trouble after that, So it's it would

1386
01:07:29,840 --> 01:07:31,280
Speaker 4: have been kind of game.

1387
01:07:31,600 --> 01:07:34,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's no good options for someone, and it's

1388
01:07:34,560 --> 01:07:36,680
Speaker 2: like she's taking trying to take the best option, which

1389
01:07:36,680 --> 01:07:39,520
Speaker 2: is at least gaining some level of control, trying to

1390
01:07:39,680 --> 01:07:42,280
Speaker 2: write and it doesn't work out, and almost as soon

1391
01:07:42,320 --> 01:07:45,440
Speaker 2: as things end, he with Ginny As a result of this,

1392
01:07:46,160 --> 01:07:49,479
Speaker 2: he picks a new victim slash partner, an enslaved woman

1393
01:07:49,640 --> 01:07:53,280
Speaker 2: named Fibba. She had been the last overseers mistress and

1394
01:07:53,440 --> 01:07:56,200
Speaker 2: she was his cook. When he starts at Egypt Plantation

1395
01:07:56,760 --> 01:08:00,720
Speaker 2: in December of seventeen fifty three, they are physically together

1396
01:08:00,840 --> 01:08:04,120
Speaker 2: for the first time. Again, this is a sex crime,

1397
01:08:04,160 --> 01:08:07,120
Speaker 2: but she is It is framed in his life, and

1398
01:08:07,280 --> 01:08:10,280
Speaker 2: she is at least acceding to this image of it

1399
01:08:10,400 --> 01:08:13,560
Speaker 2: to him as a romantic relationship, and they will be

1400
01:08:13,640 --> 01:08:15,600
Speaker 2: together the rest of his life in this kind of

1401
01:08:15,680 --> 01:08:21,439
Speaker 2: grotesque parody of marriage. And again I want to reiterate

1402
01:08:21,520 --> 01:08:23,880
Speaker 2: here at the end of this that nothing we're talking about.

1403
01:08:23,880 --> 01:08:26,320
Speaker 2: We have all this detail about Thomas, and it's hideous

1404
01:08:26,360 --> 01:08:28,519
Speaker 2: the things he did, and we barely scratch the surface.

1405
01:08:29,240 --> 01:08:32,720
Speaker 2: It's really important that I lay out here something that's

1406
01:08:32,760 --> 01:08:33,920
Speaker 2: going to need to carry us through the rest of

1407
01:08:33,960 --> 01:08:37,200
Speaker 2: the episode, which is that there's no evidence Thomas Thistlewood

1408
01:08:37,280 --> 01:08:41,160
Speaker 2: was particularly bad for a slave owner or an overseer

1409
01:08:41,280 --> 01:08:44,519
Speaker 2: and Jamaica in this period of time, or would have

1410
01:08:44,600 --> 01:08:48,120
Speaker 2: been considered bad in the Confederacy in North America right

1411
01:08:48,880 --> 01:08:51,240
Speaker 2: or in what became the Confederate states. There's no evidence

1412
01:08:51,280 --> 01:08:54,200
Speaker 2: that he was particularly violent. There's no evidence that he

1413
01:08:54,400 --> 01:08:57,200
Speaker 2: was a committed rape on a wider scale than his peers.

1414
01:08:57,520 --> 01:09:01,000
Speaker 2: They were all like this. He just kept a diary, right,

1415
01:09:01,800 --> 01:09:02,679
Speaker 2: And so when we tell.

1416
01:09:02,560 --> 01:09:04,320
Speaker 3: Me like he was sort of an average of what

1417
01:09:04,439 --> 01:09:05,640
Speaker 3: people may have been acting, like.

1418
01:09:05,880 --> 01:09:08,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, because part of the thing is no one

1419
01:09:08,400 --> 01:09:11,880
Speaker 2: notices shit about this guy's diary until like the I

1420
01:09:11,920 --> 01:09:14,439
Speaker 2: think it's the early twentieth century when this rule. It

1421
01:09:14,520 --> 01:09:17,000
Speaker 2: might have been after the US Civil War when people

1422
01:09:17,080 --> 01:09:20,559
Speaker 2: started first started looking into it, but people who owned

1423
01:09:20,760 --> 01:09:23,880
Speaker 2: slaves at the time in Jamaica didn't think anything of

1424
01:09:24,000 --> 01:09:26,560
Speaker 2: what he was writing. This was not extreme, This was

1425
01:09:26,640 --> 01:09:28,640
Speaker 2: not horrifying. This was an upsetting. This was a guy

1426
01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:31,400
Speaker 2: chronicling daily life in a normal way. Like what he

1427
01:09:31,479 --> 01:09:33,439
Speaker 2: wrote about doing to these people was no different than

1428
01:09:33,520 --> 01:09:36,679
Speaker 2: him taking notes about the weather. That's very much still.

1429
01:09:36,600 --> 01:09:39,679
Speaker 4: Sort of an outcasting type of Well, so that's interesting

1430
01:09:39,720 --> 01:09:41,600
Speaker 4: because it kind of I feel like it draws like

1431
01:09:41,920 --> 01:09:45,320
Speaker 4: the people who end up going into being sleeve owners

1432
01:09:45,439 --> 01:09:48,519
Speaker 4: probably all have that like already those fucked up yet flags.

1433
01:09:48,560 --> 01:09:51,439
Speaker 4: But it sounded like, yeah, early in his life, like

1434
01:09:51,640 --> 01:09:55,559
Speaker 4: people saw red flags and then all those people congregated.

1435
01:09:55,080 --> 01:09:58,160
Speaker 2: And became right. Yeah, it is still like.

1436
01:09:58,360 --> 01:10:00,200
Speaker 4: Just like it's not like this is like these are

1437
01:10:00,240 --> 01:10:02,880
Speaker 4: the good I mean, I don't know just by bristle

1438
01:10:02,920 --> 01:10:04,680
Speaker 4: to that, because it's still like there is evidence that

1439
01:10:04,760 --> 01:10:07,200
Speaker 4: these people were seen as like not like I don't

1440
01:10:07,200 --> 01:10:09,040
Speaker 4: want my daughter to marry someone like this.

1441
01:10:09,680 --> 01:10:11,840
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I'm saying within the context of people

1442
01:10:11,920 --> 01:10:15,519
Speaker 2: who were running plantations. He was not abnormal, right.

1443
01:10:15,640 --> 01:10:18,680
Speaker 3: While there politics were like they're all kind of fucked up.

1444
01:10:18,640 --> 01:10:20,479
Speaker 2: And yeah, those people are certainly all going to be

1445
01:10:20,560 --> 01:10:22,519
Speaker 2: more fucked in the head than some random dude who

1446
01:10:22,600 --> 01:10:25,080
Speaker 2: like lives in London and works like at a like

1447
01:10:25,200 --> 01:10:27,679
Speaker 2: at a counting house, or is like lives a little

1448
01:10:27,720 --> 01:10:30,000
Speaker 2: further north and is working in like the first coal

1449
01:10:30,080 --> 01:10:33,120
Speaker 2: mines that open. Those guys are part of a slave state,

1450
01:10:33,240 --> 01:10:35,760
Speaker 2: but they're not thinking about what's They would probably be

1451
01:10:35,880 --> 01:10:37,880
Speaker 2: upset if you were to explain to them what Thomas

1452
01:10:37,920 --> 01:10:40,679
Speaker 2: Thistle what's putting it his diary, because it's it's more upsetting.

1453
01:10:41,000 --> 01:10:42,920
Speaker 2: Which isn't to say that they'd feel about the way

1454
01:10:43,000 --> 01:10:46,720
Speaker 2: we do. But like this is these are all of

1455
01:10:46,800 --> 01:10:50,240
Speaker 2: these slave societies are really brutal, right, and It's why

1456
01:10:50,840 --> 01:10:53,599
Speaker 2: whenever you get abolition movements a big thing. These abolition

1457
01:10:53,760 --> 01:10:56,559
Speaker 2: movements are doing both the first one that sets up

1458
01:10:56,600 --> 01:10:59,400
Speaker 2: that gets slavery outlawed in the British Empire and the

1459
01:10:59,479 --> 01:11:02,600
Speaker 2: one in the United States. A big part of what

1460
01:11:02,960 --> 01:11:06,400
Speaker 2: abolitionists are doing is just taking, when they can, very

1461
01:11:06,560 --> 01:11:09,800
Speaker 2: normal accounts of daily life in these places where chattel

1462
01:11:09,840 --> 01:11:13,160
Speaker 2: slavery is the norm, right, and talking about them to people,

1463
01:11:13,520 --> 01:11:17,000
Speaker 2: because to people who live outside of that, it's fucked

1464
01:11:17,040 --> 01:11:20,439
Speaker 2: up and horrifying, right, Like, even if those people are

1465
01:11:20,520 --> 01:11:23,400
Speaker 2: not what we would call it have a modern attitude

1466
01:11:23,400 --> 01:11:25,360
Speaker 2: on race or anything like that, they're still horrified by

1467
01:11:25,360 --> 01:11:27,479
Speaker 2: a lot of what they're hearing about because it's really bad,

1468
01:11:28,040 --> 01:11:32,160
Speaker 2: you know. But yeah, within that community, Thomas is a

1469
01:11:32,240 --> 01:11:35,400
Speaker 2: normal guy within the community of assholes. He's a normal asshole.

1470
01:11:35,479 --> 01:11:37,240
Speaker 2: I think it's the way I would come down.

1471
01:11:37,120 --> 01:11:39,000
Speaker 3: On him, right, Not an exceptional asshole.

1472
01:11:39,360 --> 01:11:41,800
Speaker 2: No, No, he just kind of is more of a

1473
01:11:41,880 --> 01:11:45,439
Speaker 2: nerd about being an asshole than most people. And that's

1474
01:11:45,479 --> 01:11:47,280
Speaker 2: part one. Teresa, how are you feeling.

1475
01:11:48,640 --> 01:11:48,880
Speaker 3: Well?

1476
01:11:51,400 --> 01:11:54,600
Speaker 4: I mean, however you expect. I feel like I'm not

1477
01:11:54,680 --> 01:11:59,000
Speaker 4: being very like lighthearted or funny, which lighthearted about Yeah,

1478
01:11:59,040 --> 01:12:01,040
Speaker 4: I don't know if I'm doing hey in my my role,

1479
01:12:01,160 --> 01:12:05,040
Speaker 4: but I'm learning a lot and definitely feeling uh sad

1480
01:12:05,080 --> 01:12:07,880
Speaker 4: for humanity. But yeah, I don't know should I be

1481
01:12:08,000 --> 01:12:10,680
Speaker 4: like commenting more? I feel like there's I never know

1482
01:12:10,800 --> 01:12:12,960
Speaker 4: you find a balance without being.

1483
01:12:12,800 --> 01:12:15,960
Speaker 3: Too uh to like joke a lot of fucked up.

1484
01:12:17,240 --> 01:12:20,200
Speaker 2: This is a real bad, real bleak one. Like there's

1485
01:12:20,240 --> 01:12:21,639
Speaker 2: not a lot.

1486
01:12:22,240 --> 01:12:23,120
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm not sure.

1487
01:12:23,479 --> 01:12:27,360
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna listen and be like, oh that's bad. Yeah,

1488
01:12:27,520 --> 01:12:30,960
Speaker 4: I don't want to like, yeah, I hope, I hope

1489
01:12:30,960 --> 01:12:31,400
Speaker 4: I'm doing.

1490
01:12:31,360 --> 01:12:35,439
Speaker 2: Okay, but yeah, you're You're fine. It's just bad stuff.

1491
01:12:35,800 --> 01:12:38,800
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, do you have anything you want to plug?

1492
01:12:39,040 --> 01:12:39,320
Speaker 1: T T.

1493
01:12:42,600 --> 01:12:45,160
Speaker 4: You know, truly not much going on right now because

1494
01:12:45,160 --> 01:12:47,960
Speaker 4: I'm about to have a baby, but you know, my

1495
01:12:48,120 --> 01:12:50,040
Speaker 4: my friends Zach Persard just came out with the book,

1496
01:12:50,080 --> 01:12:53,360
Speaker 4: and so I'll plug his book. It's it's a it's

1497
01:12:53,479 --> 01:12:54,920
Speaker 4: like kind of like a parody of like those like

1498
01:12:55,040 --> 01:13:00,560
Speaker 4: speaky stories, but it's a Christmas one. It's called Stories

1499
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Speaker 4: to Make You Scared of Christmas. Zach bar You've get

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Speaker 4: a free book online or you can buy it on Amazon,

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Speaker 4: So check it out.

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Speaker 3: It's a very funny comedian.

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Speaker 2: Hell yeah, check that out everybody. Uh and yeah we

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Speaker 2: will be back.

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Speaker 1: E T.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being on the show. Well

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Speaker 2: we'll talk to you again for a really depressing part too, Keawait.

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Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

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Speaker 1: dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

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Speaker 1: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every.

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Speaker 3: Wednesday and Friday.

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Speaker 5: Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash at Behind

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Speaker 5: the Bastards