Catalog
10 Rupees
| Issuer | Oriental Bank Corporation, Newera Ellia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1881-1884 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 10 Rupees |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Horizontal format note with elaborate engraved border and corner numeral medallions reading TEN. At upper centre, the bank title THE ORIENTAL BANK CORPORATION INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER is set above the Royal Arms vignette flanked by Sinhalese and Tamil script. To the left margin, an intaglio vignette of a seated allegorical female figure with lions, and to the right a classical male figure holding a caduceus. The central text panel carries a promise-to-pay legend in English with TEN RUPEES in red overprint, below which the place-date line reads Newera Ellia, with a manuscript date of 22nd January 1881, and LONDON punched in perforated letters. The lower border tablet reads CEYLON. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Uniface reverse printed in rose-red and grey-blue on white paper, with a repeating fine-line guilloche underprint. The central design presents two mirrored classical portrait vignettes of a female head in profile, framing a central numeral 10 within an ornate lozenge of lathe-work. Corner pieces bear the numeral 10, and Sinhalese and Tamil inscriptions appear in the left and right lateral panels respectively. A perforated cancellation is present across the centre. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
The Oriental Bank Corporation was one of the great British overseas banks of the nineteenth century — and this note comes from very near its end. The bank collapsed in May 1884, one of the more spectacular failures in Victorian colonial finance, brought down by bad loans in Mauritius and overexposure across South and Southeast Asia. Notes dated toward the close of the 1881–1884 window were in circulation when the doors shut.
Nuwara Eliya, spelled here in an older colonial transliteration, was a hill station in Ceylon rather than a commercial center of any scale. A branch there served the tea plantation economy that was reshaping the island's highlands in the 1880s. De La Rue's printing is characteristically clean, but it's the issuing address that gives this note its specificity.