1 Pound City of Glasgow Bank

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.