The Rebels of Breadnut Island Pen respond to The Thomas Thistlewood Papers, held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Thistlewood (1721–1786), born in Lincolnshire, England, was a notorious enslaver, planter, diarist, and serial rapist. In 1750, he migrated to Jamaica—Britain’s wealthiest colony at the height of the transatlantic slave trade—initially working as an overseer on several plantations before purchasing Breadnut Island Pen in 1767.

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Thistlewood kept extensive diaries spanning over 14,000 pages, meticulously documenting the atrocities he committed against the people he enslaved. His journals reveal the appalling conditions they endured, marked by relentless sexual violence and a brutal system of discipline. To suppress resistance, he routinely employed torture and punished escape attempts with extreme cruelty. As a final act of dehumanisation, he branded each enslaved person with his initials, “TT,” searing them into their right shoulders.

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Among his victims were Phibbah and Molia. Jamaican-born Phibbah worked as a domestic servant, overseeing the upkeep of his plantation house. Thistlewood referred to her as his long-term concubine, and she bore his only son. In contrast, Molia arrived at Breadnut Island Pen as a fifteen-year-old girl of Igbo origin, having survived the harrowing Middle Passage from West Africa. After purchasing and branding Molia, Thistlewood renamed her Coobah and forced her into field labour until he eventually sold her.​​​​​​​​