5 Pounds Montagu Bank

The Montagu Bank was one of several short-lived Cape Colony private banks that issued their own notes during the mid-nineteenth century, operating in an environment where no central authority regulated note issuance and public confidence in any given institution could evaporate with a single bad season's harvests. William Brown & Co. in London handled the printing, a common arrangement for colonial issuers who lacked access to domestic security printers of sufficient quality.

The bank did not survive long past the 1860s. Survivors of this series are rare, and unissued remainders account for a disproportionate share of what exists in collections today.