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100 Pounds
| Issuer | African Banking Corporation Limited, Durban |
|---|---|
| Year | 189x |
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| Value | 100 Pounds |
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| Obverse description | Pink and black intaglio-printed note with an elaborate engraved border of scrollwork and floral ornaments. At left, a classical allegorical female figure stands beside a recumbent lion, rendered in fine intaglio engraving. The central field carries a pink guilloche underprint with manuscript promise-to-pay text, the denomination ONE HUNDRED POUNDS in a black panel, and the issuing office DURBAN; the heading NATAL appears in a cartouche at top centre, with AFRICAN BANKING CORPORATION LIMITED arched above the central area. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Uniformly printed in deep rose-red, the reverse is dominated by a large central shield vignette bearing a map of the African continent, set within radiating guilloche lozenges and enclosed by an ornate scalloped border. The denomination 100 / ONE HUNDRED / POUNDS is repeated in bold letterpress at left and right within medallion cartouches. The full corporate title AFRICAN BANKING CORPORATION LIMITED arches across the top and bottom of the design. A SPECIMEN overprint is visible across the central vignette. |
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| Comments |
The African Banking Corporation was a British overseas bank operating across southern Africa, and its Durban branch notes occupy a strange niche — legally valid instruments in the Colony of Natal during a period when no single authority had fully rationalized the colonial currency. Bradbury Wilkinson, by the 1890s, was producing some of the most technically sophisticated intaglio work available to commercial banking clients, and a 100 Pound denomination suggests this note was almost entirely a commercial and trade instrument rather than anything passing through ordinary hands.
The "189x" dating format means the final digit was completed by hand at issue — a common enough practice, but one that complicates precise dating today. Surviving examples of this denomination are exceptionally rare.