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100 Rupees
| Issuer | Bank of Bengal |
|---|---|
| Year | 1857 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | The upper portion of the note is dominated by a central allegorical vignette in which a seated female figure is flanked by two reclining figures, a lion, and palm trees set against a riverine landscape, all surmounted by a bold letterpress legend BANK OF BENGAL in a decorative arc. A green guilloche underprint occupies the central text field, which carries a handwritten promise-to-pay inscription dated Calcutta 1857, with the denomination ONE HUNDRED rendered in letterpress to the right. The lower panel presents an ornate engine-turned cartouche inscribed One Hundred, with a further Bank of Bengal panel at lower right bearing a manuscript signature. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is printed in blue-green ink and arranged in a symmetrical two-panel layout, each panel enclosing the numeral 100 within an oval guilloche cartouche flanked by smaller circular rosette devices. A central ornamental wreath frames the large denomination notation R100, with Bengali script inscriptions set within engine-turned cartouches below each panel. The serial number prefix F appears in mirror image at the upper corners of both panels. |
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| Comments |
The Bank of Bengal was one of the three Presidency Banks — the others being Bombay and Madras — and unlike a central bank, it issued notes redeemable only at its own offices, not across British India. The year 1857 places this note directly within the Sepoy Mutiny, which severely disrupted commercial activity across northern India and triggered acute credit stress in Calcutta's mercantile community. Whether notes of this date saw normal circulation or were caught up in the banking disruptions of that period is a question the surviving record doesn't cleanly answer.
P#S93 is scarce. The Bank of Bengal was absorbed into the Imperial Bank of India in 1921, and institutional paper from the mid-nineteenth century was not systematically preserved.