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5 Rupees Oriental Bank Corporation
| Issuer | Oriental Bank Corporation |
|---|---|
| Year | 1881 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Red and blue letterpress print centred on an elaborate circular guilloche medallion with interlocking lathe-work borders. Numeral "5" appears in each corner within ornate cartouches. Bilingual value inscriptions in Sinhala and Tamil script are set within the central panel. |
| Reverse lettering | 5 FIVE රුපියල් පහයි ஐந்து ரூபாய் (Translation: Five rupees.) |
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| Comments |
The Oriental Bank Corporation collapsed in May 1884, making any note issued in the final years of its operation historically pointed. Founded in Bombay in 1842 and operating across India, Ceylon, China, Japan, and Australia, it was one of the great British exchange banks of the nineteenth century — until a series of bad colonial loans, particularly in Ceylon's failing coffee plantations, brought it down. The 1884 failure was one of the largest bank collapses the British colonial financial world had seen to that point.
An 1881 note predates the crash by three years. Bradbury Wilkinson produced work of consistently high engraving quality throughout this period, and their colonial banking commissions are among the more technically accomplished private bank notes of the Victorian era.