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50 Dollars
| Issuer | Oriental Bank Corporation |
|---|---|
| Year | 1866 |
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| Currency | Dollar (1858-date) |
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| Obverse description | Engraved in classical intaglio, the note is headed INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER and centred on the Royal Arms vignette — a crowned shield supported by a lion and a unicorn — above the place name VICTORIA, with the denomination FIFTY repeated at upper left and upper right. The main text panel carries the promise to pay legend in letterpress, with Chinese script panels along both vertical margins. The printer's imprint BATHO & Co., 35, LOMBARD STREET, LONDON appears at lower centre, with SPECIMEN overprinted across the face. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER FIFTY HONG KONG. VICTORIA, THE ORIENTAL BANK CORPORATION Promise to pay the Bearer on demand, at their Office here, Fifty Dollars, or the equivalent in the Currency of the Island. Value received. By order of the Court of Directors. BATHO & Co., 35, Lombard Street, London. MANAGER. SPECIMEN |
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| Comments |
The Oriental Bank Corporation was one of the great exchange banks of the British Empire — chartered in 1851, operating across India, Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Far East at its peak. By 1866, the year this note was printed, the bank was already navigating the aftershocks of the global credit crisis of 1866, triggered by the collapse of Overend, Gurney & Co. in May of that year. The OBC survived that immediate shock, but the strain on its colonial operations was permanent.
Batho & Co. of Lombard Street was a relatively minor security printer by the standards of the period — not Perkins Bacon, not De La Rue — which makes their work for the OBC worth noting. The bank ultimately failed in 1884, with its remaining assets absorbed during a liquidation that rendered most surviving instruments void.