 In 1754, William Crookshanks was hired by Dorrill to assist Thistlewood, and he immediately raped an enslaved woman named Bess, but within three months he was complaining of having contracted "the clap".In 1757, another white employee, Thomas Fewkes, caught the same disease from a slave named Little Lydde, who was raped by Thistlewood.Unsurprisingly, Thistlewood's own Phibbah developed a venereal disease in 1761, and on the advice of his European doctor, Thistlewood plied her with mercury pills.