5 Pounds White, without thread

The "white fiver" — printed in black on white paper with no background tint — remained essentially unchanged in format for over a century, a deliberate conservatism rooted in the Bank's confidence that its paper quality and watermark were sufficient protection against forgery. That confidence was badly shaken during the Second World War when the Germans ran Operation Bernhard, a large-scale counterfeiting programme that produced white fivers of sufficiently convincing quality to cause serious concern at Threadneedle Street.

Peppiatt's signature on the later examples of this type spans the war years. The note was withdrawn and replaced in 1945, directly because of Bernhard.