10 Pounds Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China

The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China received its royal charter in 1853, carved out of the earlier Union Bank of Calcutta. By the 1860s it was operating across Bombay, Calcutta, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore — a genuinely sprawling network for the period — and issuing notes denominated in pounds sterling rather than local currencies, a deliberate positioning to serve British merchant houses rather than indigenous trade.

Perkins, Bacon produced the plates using their established security printing techniques, the same house responsible for the world's first adhesive postage stamp. The £10 face value placed this note firmly in commercial and inter-bank use; retail transactions would never have seen it.