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1 Pound Dartmouth General Bank
| Issuer | Dartmouth General Bank |
|---|---|
| Year | 1820 |
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| Value | 1 Pound |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Dartmouth General Bank £1 Promise to pay the Bearer on Demand ONE POUND Value received Dartmouth 28th day of Jan 1820 for John Hine and Henry Joseph Holdsworth ONE |
| Reverse description | The reverse is essentially plain aged paper with a central letterpress bank-name stamp enclosed within a simple ornamental cartouche, applied as a validation impression. Manuscript endorsements in ink appear at lower left, consistent with circulation-era transfer notations. |
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| Comments |
The Dartmouth General Bank was one of dozens of small English country banks that issued their own notes under the permissive pre-1826 banking framework. The Bank of England's monopoly on joint-stock banking within 65 miles of London left the provinces to private partnerships, many of which were dangerously undercapitalized. The 1826 Country Bankers Act, passed in the wake of a catastrophic wave of country bank failures in 1825–26, would eliminate the six-partner limit and allow larger joint-stock banks to form — effectively ending the viability of houses like Dartmouth General.
Whether this particular bank survived to 1826 is not certain. Devon saw several failures in that panic year.