Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
25 Pounds White, 1778 issue
| Issuer | Bank of England |
|---|---|
| Year | 1778-1807 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 25 Pounds |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Unilateral white note with the Bank of England's crowned royal arms vignette at upper right. The promise-to-pay text is rendered in copperplate letterpress script across the face, with the denomination "TWENTY FIVE" set in bold Gothic blackletter type at lower centre. A Britannia vignette appears at upper left, and manuscript annotations, cashier's signature, and entry stamp complete the note's face. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 1771 BANK 26/9/1867 I Promise to pay to_ or Bearer on Demand the Sum of TWENTY FIVE Pounds London on the 10 day of March 1792 For the Govr and Compa of the Bank of England £TWENTY FIVE Ent.d |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
The so-called "White Notes" of the Bank of England were handwritten — or partially so — on distinctive laid paper watermarked with the denomination and produced entirely in-house at Threadneedle Street. For most of the eighteenth century, the Bank's cashiers signed each note individually by hand, meaning no two examples are identical in that respect. This was not tradition for its own sake: handwritten signatures were a deliberate anti-counterfeiting measure, on the theory that a forger could not reproduce a living clerk's variable hand at scale.
The theory proved optimistic. By the 1790s, forgery of Bank of England notes had become a serious criminal and social problem, one that would eventually force a complete rethink of note production in the following century. A £25 denomination was substantial — comfortably above a laborer's annual wage — so these circulated primarily between merchants and banking houses rather than in retail trade.