Catalog
5 Rupees
| Issuer | Oriental Bank Corporation |
|---|---|
| Year | 1864-1875 |
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| In circulation to | Yes |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio print on plain paper with a fine guilloche border. The Royal Arms of Great Britain — lion and unicorn supporters flanking a crowned shield with motto DIEU ET MON DROIT — forms the central top vignette, flanked by two circular denomination medallions bearing 'FIVE RUPEES' in Sinhala and Tamil script. The promise-to-pay text below is set within a heavy guilloche panel with script lettering. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | රුපියල් පහයි ஐந்து ரூபாய் FIVE RUPEES 5 INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER JAFFNA, CEYLON 1st, June 1875 THE ORIENTAL BANK CORPORATION Promise to pay the Bearer on demand at their Branch here, or at their Bank in Colombo FIVE RUPEES Value received. By order of the Court of Directors, Entd. Accountt. Agent. (Translation: Five rupees.) |
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| Comments |
The Oriental Bank Corporation, chartered in Bombay in 1842, was one of the great colonial banking failures of the Victorian period — it collapsed in 1884 under the weight of bad Ceylon coffee plantation loans, wiping out shareholders and triggering a protracted liquidation that ran into the 1890s. Notes from the 1864–1875 window predate the warning signs and were issued when the bank still operated branches across India, Ceylon, Mauritius, China, and Australia, making currency management a genuinely complex logistical problem across multiple monetary systems.
Perkins, Bacon engraved and printed the plates in London — the same firm responsible for the Penny Black. Their intaglio work on colonial bank notes from this period is technically accomplished and notoriously difficult to counterfeit, which was the whole point.