1 Pound Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China

The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China — formed by royal charter in 1853 out of the earlier Union Bank of Calcutta — was one of several exchange banks competing aggressively across Asian trade routes in the 1860s. Its £1 notes circulated primarily in Hong Kong and the treaty ports rather than in Britain, where demand for a one-pound banknote was already saturated by the clearing banks.

Perkins, Bacon produced the plates using their steel-engraving process, the same security printing technology they applied to postage stamps for dozens of colonial administrations. The bank was absorbed into the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China in 1892.