100 Dollars

The Union Bank of Calcutta operated in Singapore under the Presidency banking framework, one of several British-chartered institutions competing for the Straits trade business during the 1840s. Its Singapore branch issued notes locally denominated in dollars — the Spanish and later Mexican dollar being the dominant trade currency of the port — rather than in rupees, a deliberate concession to the commercial realities of a market that ran on Chinese, Malay, and European exchange simultaneously.

Smith, Elder & Co. were primarily a London publishing house that maintained a sideline in financial printing — an unusual combination that reflects how undifferentiated security printing was as a specialist trade before firms like Perkins Bacon and De La Rue consolidated the field later in the century.