1 Pound

The Central Bank of New Brunswick was a short-lived institution, chartered in 1834 and wound up by the late 1860s after chronic difficulties maintaining public confidence and adequate specie reserves. By the early 1850s, when this note was produced, the New Brunswick colonial banking environment was crowded and competitive, with several chartered banks issuing their own notes in a loose system that relied heavily on reputation rather than regulatory backstop.

Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Co. was among the most accomplished security printers in North America at this date — the same firm, shortly reconfigured, would become the American Bank Note Company in 1858. Their lathe-work guilloche patterns were considered essentially impossible to replicate by hand engraving, which made them the preferred deterrent against the substantial counterfeiting problem colonial Canadian currency faced throughout this period.

The S-prefix in the Pick reference indicates this is catalogued as a private bank issue rather than a central government emission — technically accurate given New Brunswick's colonial status at the time of printing, fifteen years before Confederation.