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20 Company Rupees Union Bank, Calcutta
| Issuer | Union Bank, Calcutta |
|---|---|
| Year | 1847 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Heavy light-brown decorative borders frame the note, with serpent vignettes occupying the left and right border panels. The numeral 20 appears in each of the four corners, rendered in four scripts — English, Bengali, Devanagari, and Urdu/Persian. A serial number is positioned in the upper centre-left of the note. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | UNION BANK UNION BANK, CALCUTTA ON DEMAND Promise to pay the Bearer Company Rupees Twenty for the Trustees of the Union Bank |
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| Comments |
The Union Bank of Calcutta was one of the three "presidency banks" era private joint-stock banks operating in British India during the mid-nineteenth century, though unlike the Bank of Bengal it lacked government backing and eventually collapsed in 1848 — just one year after this note was issued — in a spectacular failure that wiped out shareholders and depositors alike. The bank's insolvency was part of a broader credit crisis that had been building since the speculative boom of the early 1840s.
A surviving 1847 note predates the collapse by months. Given that failed-bank paper was rarely preserved systematically in colonial India, examples from this issuer are genuinely uncommon in any condition.