1 Pound Colonial Bank, bank name in underprint

The Colonial Bank was a British overseas bank chartered in 1836 to serve the West Indies, operating branches across Barbados, Trinidad, British Guiana, and several smaller Caribbean islands. By the time this note was printed, the bank was already in the final chapter of its independent existence — Barclays absorbed it in 1925 along with the Anglo-Egyptian Bank and the National Bank of South Africa to form Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas).

Perkins, Bacon & Petch had been engraving security printing for colonial issuers since the mid-nineteenth century, and the underprint carrying the bank name was a deliberate anti-counterfeiting measure the firm employed across multiple Caribbean issues of this period. The S181 designation places this firmly in the colonial banking private issue category rather than a government-authorized emission.