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50 Dollars
| Issuer | Bank of British North America |
|---|---|
| Year | 184x |
| Type | Pattern or trial banknote |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio print on white paper. Central vignette of a seated allegorical female figure holding scales of justice, flanked by oval guilloche panels inscribed CINQUANTE and FIFTY; lower-left roundel with Commerce and Britannia figures, lower-right roundel with an agricultural scene. Vertical KINGSTON inscriptions on both lateral borders; SPECIMEN overprint at foot of note. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Plain unprinted white paper reverse, showing age toning and scattered foxing marks across the surface. |
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| Comments |
Perkins, Bacon & Co. produced this note using their proprietary steel-engraving method, developed specifically to defeat counterfeiters — the firm's founder, Jacob Perkins, had emigrated from Massachusetts to London in 1819 partly to commercialize this technology with British colonial banking clients. The Bank of British North America, chartered in London in 1836, relied on Perkins Bacon for much of its early colonial currency precisely because local North American printing infrastructure couldn't match the security standard.
The "184x" dating places this in the bank's first decade of operation, before branch expansion into the Canadian interior complicated note redemption across vast distances. High-denomination issues at this period circulated almost exclusively in mercantile and interbank settlement — retail use was negligible.