5 Company Rupees Union Bank, Calcutta

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.