3 Shillings Siege of Mafeking

One of the more unusual emergency issues of the Anglo-Boer War, this note was produced inside the besieged town of Mafeking between October 1899 and May 1900, when Baden-Powell's garrison was cut off from any external financial supply. The printer — identified only as "T. & Son, Mafeking" — almost certainly refers to a local commercial printer pressed into wartime service rather than any established security printing house.

The siege lasted 217 days. Notes were issued in multiple denominations to keep the local economy functioning, backed by nothing more than the authority of the military commander and the assumption that relief would eventually come. It did, on 17 May 1900, though the notes were subsequently honoured — a detail that distinguishes Mafeking scrip from many other siege currencies that were simply repudiated after the fact.