Saunders is a minor antagonist in the television movie Sharpe's Justice.
He was portrayed by Philip Martin Brown, who also played Grantly Budgen in Waterloo Road.
Biography[]
Saunders was the foreman of the mill owned by Sir Willoughby Parfitt, who also functioned as Parfitt's eyes and ears in Keighthley. He brought Parfitt and Major Richard Sharpe, who had been sent to lead the local yeomanry, news of the fact that Matthew Truman, a notorious rabble rouser, was making a speech in town. This led to Captain George Wickham ignoring Sharpe's orders and indiscriminately attacking those listening to the speech.
Saunders continued to eavesdrop on conversations and brought Parfitt the news that Sharpe and Truman were half-brothers. He confronted Sally Bunting, with whom Sharpe and his friend Sergeant Major Patrick Harper had been staying, and beat her until she admitted Sharpe was meeting Truman at the graveyard. Wickham and his men ambushed and killed Truman but Sharpe and his friends escaped.
Saunders was involved in Parfitt's acts of sabotage against his competitors, which Truman was being made a scapegoat for. Together with Wickham and the yeomanry, he ambushed the men transporting a steam engine for Lord Stanwyck, only for them to be ambushed in turn by Sharpe, Harper and Daniel Hagman. In the confusion, Saunders shot one of Stanwyck's men in the back as he tried to flee, but was reduced to a jibbering wreck on being confronted by Sharpe, nervously trying to threaten him with his unloaded pistol and then begging for mercy. Sharpe gave him a beating in revenge for his treatment of Sally. Not long after, Stanwyck arrived with dragoons to take Saunders and the others into custody.
