10 Joes = 220 Guilders

The Court of Policy — a legislative body inherited from Dutch colonial administration and retained under British rule after 1803 — retained the authority to issue paper currency in Demerary and Essequebo well into the nineteenth century, an unusual arrangement that persisted because London had not yet imposed a unified monetary framework on its Guiana territories. The denomination itself reflects the monetary confusion of the period: the "Joe," a corruption of "Johannes," was a Portuguese gold coin widely used as a unit of account across the Caribbean and South American littoral long after actual Johanneses had ceased to circulate.

The fixed equivalence of 22 guilders to one Joe printed on this note anchors it firmly in the Dutch accounting tradition that continued in daily commerce decades after the British flag went up.