1 Shilling

Malta's wartime shilling notes were authorized under the Currency Notes Ordinance and issued while the island was under sustained Axis bombardment — the George Cross was awarded to Malta collectively in April 1942, the year before this note entered circulation. Printing by Bradbury Wilkinson in London and shipping to an actively besieged island was a logistical exercise in itself.

The 1943 series replaced earlier emergency issues and was intended to ease the severe coin shortage that rationing and disrupted supply lines had created. Small-denomination notes of this type typically suffered hard circulation and high attrition rates; genuine uncirculated examples from this series are uncommon precisely because the economic conditions that demanded them also destroyed them.