10 Rupees Diyatalawa; PoW Camp

Diyatalawa, in the hill country of Ceylon, held Boer prisoners captured during the South African War — at its peak, over 5,000 men were interned there. This note is one of several denominations issued by the camp administration to function as internal scrip, allowing prisoners to make purchases within the compound without handling British colonial currency. The system was common in larger PoW camps of the period and served as much to control the internal economy as to accommodate it.

Ceylon-issued Boer PoW scrip survives in smaller quantities than comparable notes from the Green Point camp near Cape Town, partly because repatriation in 1902 left little incentive to bring the paper home.