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5 Rupees Galle; Oriental Bank Corporation
| Issuer | Oriental Bank Corporation |
|---|---|
| Year | 1866 |
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| Currency | Rupee (1871-1972) |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio print on plain paper with a decorative guilloche border frame. The British Royal Arms vignette occupies the top centre, flanked by two oval cartouches inscribed FIVE RUPEES in Sinhala and Tamil scripts. Issuer name, branch location, date, and promise-to-pay text fill the lower portion in letterpress, with handwritten accountant and agent signatures at foot. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | රුපියල් පහයි ஐந்து ரூபாய் FIVE RUPEES INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER GALLE, CEYLON 15th, June 1866 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. Perkins, Bacon & Co, London. Patent Hardened Steel Plate. (Translation: Five rupees.) |
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| Comments |
The Oriental Bank Corporation was chartered in London in 1851 and became one of the dominant exchange banks operating across British colonial Asia. By the 1860s it held a near-monopoly on silver exchange in Ceylon, and its branch notes issued at Galle — then the island's principal port before Colombo eclipsed it — circulated among merchants handling the cinnamon and coffee trades.
Perkins, Bacon & Petch were the foremost security printers of the period, responsible for the first adhesive postage stamps and a significant share of colonial currency work. The bank collapsed in 1884, caught in the wreckage of the Australian land credit crisis, making surviving pre-failure branch notes genuinely uncommon.