10 Rupees Oriental Bank Corporation

The Oriental Bank Corporation collapsed in May 1884, making any note issued in the final years of its operation — including this 1881 example — part of a very short window of survival. The bank had weathered an earlier crisis in 1866 but could not absorb the catastrophic losses from failed coffee and indigo plantations across Ceylon and India. When the doors closed, noteholders faced significant losses; the liquidation dragged on for years.

Bradbury Wilkinson had been producing the corporation's notes since the mid-nineteenth century. Their intaglio work for colonial banking clients of this period is among the finer commercial engraving produced in London at the time.