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5 Company Rupees Union Bank, Calcutta
| Issuer | Union Bank, Calcutta |
|---|---|
| Year | 1847 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Heavy light-brown decorative borders frame the note, with elephant vignettes occupying the left and right border panels. The numeral '5' 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-left area of the central field. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | UNION BANK UNION BANK, CALCUTTA ON DEMAND 25 May 1847 Promise to pay the Bearer Company Rupees Five for the Trustees of the Union Bank |
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| Comments |
The Union Bank of Calcutta was one of the three early "presidency banks" competitors operating under agency arrangements with the East India Company before the Presidency Banks Act of 1876 consolidated the banking structure. It collapsed in 1848 — just a year after this note's date — in one of British India's more spectacular banking failures, brought down by over-extended credit and a wave of insolvencies following the commercial crisis of the mid-1840s.
Notes issued in its final year of operation are rare survivors. The bank's closure was sudden enough that redemption was incomplete, leaving an uncertain number of notes unreturned.