See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

1 Pound City of Glasgow Bank

Issuer City of Glasgow Bank
Year 1871-1876
Type Log in to see details
Value 1 Pound
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Size Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Printer Log in to see details
Designer(s) Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description The upper portion of the note is dominated by a seated female allegorical figure, flanked at left by the Scottish royal arms and at right by the arms of the City of Glasgow; the royal arms are repeated at the foot of the design. The central letterpress panel carries the promise-to-pay text within a frame of fine guilloche ornamental borders.
Obverse lettering Log in to see details
Reverse description Printed entirely in blue, the reverse centres on a large oval vignette of the City of Glasgow coat of arms — displaying the bell, bird, tree, and fish motifs — encircled by the motto 'LET GLASGOW FLOURISH' with the lower legend 'BY THE PREACHING OF THE WORD'. Two symmetrical circular guilloche rosettes, each bearing the interlaced monogram 'CGB', flank the central oval, and the printer's imprint 'Gilmour & Dean, Glasgow' appears at the foot.
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Signature(s) Log in to see details
Protection type Log in to see details
Protection description Log in to see details
Variants Log in to see details
Comments

The City of Glasgow Bank collapsed in October 1878 in one of the most catastrophic bank failures in British history. The directors had been falsifying balance sheets for years, concealing losses from speculative lending. When the fraud was exposed, the bank's unlimited liability structure meant shareholders — many of them small tradespeople and professionals — were personally ruined. Over 1,200 of them were made bankrupt. The disaster directly accelerated the push for limited liability as standard in Scottish banking.

Notes from the 1871–1876 period predate the collapse by several years but were issued under the same fraudulent management. Gilmour & Dean were the bank's regular Glasgow printers throughout this period.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE