50 Dollars

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.