50 Mil Reis

Banco do Brazil's Bahia branch issues are among the more obscure entries in nineteenth-century Brazilian paper money, and this 50 Mil Reis is no exception. The bank itself had been reconstituted in 1853 under Irineu Evangelista de Sousa — later the Barão de Mauá — and regional branches were authorized to issue their own notes, which circulated alongside those from Rio de Janeiro but were not always accepted at face value outside their home province.

Bradbury & Evans was primarily known as a London publishing house — Dickens's printer — but maintained a short-lived banknote division in the 1850s before the business was absorbed into other printing concerns. Their banknote output was limited, making this one of the rarer printer attributions in the Pick catalog.