50 Dollars

The Straits Settlements dollar was pegged to the Straits dollar exchange standard, and by the mid-1920s the colonial monetary authorities were managing significant cross-border flows between Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. A fifty-dollar note was not everyday currency — it circulated primarily among merchants, banks, and the larger trading houses that dominated the entrepôt economy. Denominations at this level rarely wore out in ordinary hands.

De La Rue produced the series in London under contract, a relationship the Straits administration maintained through several successive issues. P#12 is among the final emissions before the Board of Commissioners of Currency Malaya began consolidating note-issuing arrangements across British Malayan territories in the early 1930s.