20 Dollars Colonial Bank

The Colonial Bank operated across the British West Indies and British Guiana from its 1836 founding until Barclays absorbed it in 1926. By 1903 it was a mature institution, and this denomination would have seen real commercial use in port towns handling sugar and rum exports — the economic backbone of every territory the bank served.

Perkins, Bacon & Co. had an almost unassailable grip on colonial currency printing throughout the nineteenth century, their steel engraving work favored precisely because it was difficult to counterfeit in territories with limited detection infrastructure. The "S" suffix on the Pick reference indicates this is a specimen, almost certainly retained in Perkins, Bacon's own archive rather than issued through normal banking channels.