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50 Rupees Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China
| Issuer | Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1870 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Black letterpress on plain paper. The Royal Arms vignette is centred at top, flanked by two sunburst rosette medallions each bearing the denomination '50 RUPEES'. The text panel carries the branch designation, promise-to-pay clause, and date in script lettering, with Sinhalese and Tamil denomination inscriptions along the upper and lower borders. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | CEYLON BRANCH රුපියල් පනහයි ஐம்பது ரூபாய் 50 RUPEES INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER COLOMBO, 1st Jany. 1870 THE CHARTERED MERCANTILE BANK OF INDIA, LONDON & CHINA Promises to pay the Bearer on demand here FIFTY RUPEES, value received. By order of the Court of Directors, Entd. ACCOUNTT. MANAGER PERKINS, BACON & Co, LONDON. SPECIMEN (Translation: Fifty rupees.) |
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The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China was one of the three major British exchange banks operating across Asia in the nineteenth century, and its banknotes functioned primarily as instruments of trade finance rather than everyday currency — moving between merchant houses, agency firms, and port offices rather than through retail hands. The 1870 date places this note squarely in the bank's most active period of expansion through the Straits Settlements, Ceylon, and the China coast.
Perkins, Bacon printed the plate using their steel-engraving security method, the same technology they had applied to early postage stamps. Notes from this series are rarely encountered because survival rates for high-denomination colonial trade paper of this period are extremely low — most were redeemed and pulped within the issuing branch's own accounting cycle.