5 Pounds Isle of Man Bank

The Isle of Man Bank Limited was incorporated in 1865 and remained the dominant commercial bank on the island well into the twentieth century, issuing its own notes under the rights retained by Manx banks independently of the Bank of England. Waterlow & Sons handled the printing throughout this series, a firm that had a long and occasionally troubled relationship with banknote production — most notoriously through the Waterlow v. Bank of Portugal case of 1932, in which fraudulent overprinting of genuine Waterlow-printed plates caused a national monetary crisis in Portugal.

The twenty-four year span of this issue is unusually broad for a single pick number, suggesting relatively infrequent reissue rather than heavy circulation replacement.