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10 Dollars
| Issuer | Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1900 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Blue and green letterpress print with a large green guilloche underprint reading "TEN" across the centre. The Royal coat of arms vignette appears at upper centre within the "INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER" arc inscription, flanked by black serial numbers. Multi-script border lettering in Chinese, Tamil, and Jawi frames the note on all sides. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 10 INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER Penang 25 APRIL 1900 THE CHARTERED BANK OF INDIA, AUSTRALIA & CHINA Promises to pay the Bearer on Demand at its OFFICE here TEN DOLLARS in Local Currency for Value received. BY ORDER OF THE COURT OF DIRECTORS PENANG |
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| Comments |
The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China occupied an unusual position in the colonial banking world — it held note-issuing rights across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously, meaning plates were often designed with flexible typography to accommodate different places of payment. A London-printed note intended for circulation in, say, Shanghai or Hong Kong carried the full authority of a British royal charter granted in 1853, which gave it legal standing that locally incorporated banks could not easily match.
Batho, Sprague & Co. handled security printing for several colonial and mercantile issuers during this period, though they are considerably less documented than contemporaries like Bradbury Wilkinson or Perkins Bacon. Their work on this series is worth noting precisely because so little of it survived — high-denomination notes in active trading ports were subject to heavy use, frequent reissuance, and deliberate destruction once recalled.