Catalog
10 Piastres / Dollars = 50 Shillings
| Issuer | Army Bill Office Quebec |
|---|---|
| Year | 1815 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Plain letterpress typeset note issued by the Army Bill Office Quebec, dated January 1815, with a small floral vignette at the upper left corner. The central text states the note is redeemable by Government Bills of Exchange on London at Thirty Days sight, with the French legend 'Bon pour DIX Piastres' at the head and the trilingual denomination restatement 'Dix Piastres' and 'X. Fifty Shillings' at the foot. A manuscript serial number and ornamental rosette device appear at the lower right, with a manuscript countersignature reading 'By Order of the Commander of the Forces' to the right and an 'Entered' countersignature at the left. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse bears no independently printed design elements, the note having been produced by letterpress on one side only; faint show-through of the obverse typeset text may be visible through the thin paper. |
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| Comments |
Army Bills were Canada's first successful government-issued paper currency, introduced in 1812 to fund British military operations during the war with the United States. The issue was managed directly by the Army Bill Office in Quebec under commissary general Edward Couper, and — unusually for emergency wartime paper — they carried interest, which went a long way toward convincing a skeptical merchant class to accept them at face value.
The 1815 date places this note in the final redemption-period issues, printed after the war had effectively ended. The three-denomination face — Piastres, Dollars, and Shillings — reflects the genuinely polyglot commercial reality of Lower Canada, where English, French, and Halifax currency reckonings all coexisted in daily trade.
The series was fully redeemed by 1816, which makes survivors rare; most circulating examples were surrendered for specie and destroyed.