5 Pounds

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.