Catalog
5 Pounds
| Issuer | General Treasury of Ceylon |
|---|---|
| Year | 1850 |
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| Composition | Cotton paper |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is arranged in a horizontal format with a central intaglio vignette of a seated allegorical figure amid tropical foliage and palm trees, flanked on either side by diamond-shaped guilloche panels bearing the numeral 5, with Sinhala and Tamil script legends running across the upper and lower borders. A hand-written serial number appears at lower left and upper right, and the promise text in English script reads 'The Bearer hereof is entitled to receive on demand FIVE POUNDS at the General Treasury in the Currency of this Island at Colombo,' with bilingual Sinhala inscriptions interspersed throughout. The word FIVE appears in bold letterpress within an ornate panel at the foot of the note, accompanied by the notation 'Er & Ent'd' at lower right. |
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| Obverse lettering | CEYLON FIVE POUNDS FIVE The Bearer hereof is entitled to receive on demand FIVE POUNDS at the General Treasury in the Currency of this Island at Colombo එර් & එන්ට් පවිද්රගස ඉන්දුපවන් |
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| Comments |
The General Treasury of Ceylon issued its own notes from Colombo rather than relying on the private commercial banks — the Oriental Bank and the Chartered Bank — that otherwise dominated the island's paper money supply in the mid-nineteenth century. This government-direct issuance was a deliberate administrative choice, rooted in Whitehall's broader effort to assert tighter fiscal control over Ceylon following the 1848 Matale Rebellion, which had badly strained colonial revenues.
Five-pound denominations at this period were essentially instruments of mercantile and official transaction — plantation accounts, customs settlements, Crown disbursements. Surviving examples from the 1850 Treasury series are extremely rare; the paper printed in Colombo under tropical humidity conditions was not built to last, and redemption and destruction records suggest low survival rates even within the first decade of issue.