5 Rupees Oriental Bank Corporation

The Oriental Bank Corporation was chartered in Bombay in 1842 and became one of the most geographically overextended banks of the Victorian period — operating across India, Ceylon, Mauritius, Hong Kong, and Japan simultaneously. That ambition eventually broke it; the bank failed in 1884 after a series of bad agricultural loans tied to a collapse in Ceylonese coffee crops devastated by leaf rust disease.

Perkins, Bacon & Petch were the preeminent security printers of the mid-nineteenth century, responsible for the first adhesive postage stamps among dozens of other government contracts. Their intaglio work on private bank issues of this period is technically meticulous. The 1866 date places this note roughly eighteen years before the corporation's collapse and receiver proceedings.