100 Rupees Galle; Oriental Bank Corporation

The Oriental Bank Corporation was a British overseas bank chartered in 1851, operating across India, Ceylon, China, and Australia at its peak. The Galle branch note dates from a period when OBC was still a dominant force in Ceylon's colonial financial system — within two decades the bank would collapse spectacularly in 1884, wiped out by bad agricultural loans and a collapse in coffee prices following the island's devastating leaf blight. Notes from any OBC branch are scarce precisely because the failure was sudden and the remaining currency was largely called in or destroyed.

Perkins, Bacon engraved and printed extensively for colonial banking clients throughout this period, using steel intaglio techniques developed originally for security printing on postage stamps.