Shadrach Bickerstaff is one of the two secondary antagonists of the miniseries Sharpe's Challenge, along with Madhuvanthi.
He was portrayed by Peter Hugo Daly.
Biography[]
Bickerstaff was a sergeant in the East India Company. He supervised a flogging ordered by Sir Henry Simmerson of a soldier who had been improperly dressed. He was caught by Colonel Richard Sharpe bullying a soldier who he had ordered to clean his boots despite religious objections. Sharpe offered to fight Bickerstaff, who first claimed he wouldn't strike an officer, then attacked Sharpe when his back was turned. Sharpe gave him a beating anyway, then Bickerstaff tried to stab him in the back. Patrick Harper shouted a warning and Sharpe gave Bickerstaff a further beating.
While Sharpe and Harper went undercover in Ferraghur, Bickerstaff joined the army besieging the city. He took part in an attempt to clear the woods around the city of soldiers and ended up attacking Sharpe when he tried to slip back to the British lines. Sharpe defeated him again and Bickerstaff was captured by Colonel Gudin, the French ally of the British enemy Khande Rao.
When Khande Rao and William Dodd ordered the prisoners executed by jettis, Bickerstaff bought his survival by revealing Sharpe was a British officer. Bickerstaff was made a sergeant in Dodd's army and visited the captured Sharpe and Harper, taunting them with the fact the British would soon be beaten while they denounced him as a traitor. He also captured Princess Lalima as she attempted to take a message to the British.
Anticipating the British being defeated, Dodd sent Bickerstaff with a group of jettis to bring Sharpe and Harper to witness it. He found they had already got out of their cells, and the pair managed to defeat and kill all the jettis with help from Gudin and his batman Bonet, who had tired of Dodd's brutality. Bickerstaff fled and later killed Gudin as he was freeing the hostage Celia Burroughs. He ambushed Harper and came close to slitting his throat, only to realise Harper's gun was aimed at his chest. Harper fired at pointblank range and killed him.
Trivia[]
- Bickerstaff took his surname from Sergeant Jem Bickerstaff, a deceased character in the novel Sharpe's Tiger who had been the husband of Sharpe's love interest Mary and was said to have been a decent man.
