With no other person able to speak the different languages of the Indian indentured immigrants on a notorious Demerara estate, the last remaining of two abusive interpreters was quickly pardoned by the Governor.
At the Bellevue holding owned by the absentee wealthy Scottish businessman, Andrew Colville, the “mulatto” translator, Charles George Sharlieb resorted to violence following the negotiated return of the Estate’s 22 escapees up river from Plantation Herstelling. The group had run away in protest over ill treatment at the cruel hands of the older interpreter, another Eurasian and Christian, William James Young, 21 from Cawnpore, Callinga, India, and won his immediate removal by the Manager John Russell as a condition of their going back to work.
But the relief was short-lived. According to the historical files, Sharlieb, whose age was variously given as 19 and 21, from Hyderabad, India would assault the 18 year-old labourer Bisram, by repeatedly striking him with a leather whip or strap at the sugar cane plantation in St Mark. The parish covered the area between the Plantation Mindenberg, Canal Number 1 and the upper West Bank of Demerara.
