300 Pesos Spanish Administration

The Banco Español de la Habana was established by royal charter in 1856 as Cuba's first chartered bank, created in part to stabilize colonial finances strained by the costs of maintaining Spanish authority on the island. Bradbury Wilkinson had only recently opened their New Malden works when this commission was taken, and the 300 Peso denomination — an unusually large face value for early colonial banking — was aimed squarely at commercial and mercantile transactions rather than everyday use.

Surviving examples are genuinely rare. The bank's early years were troubled, and note redemption was inconsistent enough to draw formal complaints from Havana merchants by the early 1860s.