Derby's dose was

cruel and unusual punishment Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase in common law describing punishment that is considered unacceptable due to the suffering, pain, or humiliation it inflicts on the person subjected to the sanction. The precise definition varies by jurisdi ...

and

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...

used in

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

to punish

slaves Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

who attempted to escape or committed other offenses like stealing food on plantations that were owned or run by Thomas Thistlewood. According to

Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born 3 September 1963) is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1996. He has published eight books. He is also the host of the podcast ''Revisionist ...

in his 2008 book ''

Outliers In statistics, an outlier is a data point that differs significantly from other observations. An outlier may be due to a variability in the measurement, an indication of novel data, or it may be the result of experimental error; the latter ar ...

'', ( Thomas Thistlewood wrote about his outlandish behaviour and disturbing treatment of Jamaican slaves extensively in his 14,000 page diary) "The runaway would be beaten, and salt pickle, lime juice, and bird pepper would be rubbed into his or her open wounds. Another slave would defecate into the mouth of the miscreant ic who would then be gagged, with their mouth full, for four to five hours." The punishment was invented by Thomas Thistlewood, a slave overseer, and named after the slave, Derby, who was made to undergo this punishment when he was caught eating young sugar cane stalks in the field on 25 May 1756. However, historian Douglas Hall points out that "Derby's dose" was so-called because it was often administered by one of his slaves called Derby.Douglas Hall, ''In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750-86'', Macmillan, 1999, p. 73. Thistlewood recorded this punishment as well as a further punishment of Derby in August of that same year in his diary.

References

{{Jamaica-stub Feces Slavery in Jamaica Torture