Bank of Ceylon Notes
Perkins' Archive

Virginia Hewitt of British Museum in article says

In 1844 a local Ordinance had permitted licensed banks to issue their own notes for amounts of one pound or more. Over time this opportunity appears to have been taken up by several commercial banking companies: the Bank of Western India and the Bank of Ceylon, both of which became the Oriental Bank Corporation, ¹² the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China; and later by the Asiatic Banking Corporation. Of these, the Oriental Bank Corporation had particularly significant long-term effects, not least because the governor of Ceylon decreed that its notes would be accepted for any payments due to the government, in place of the Treasury notes. This fateful decision was justified on the grounds that in the conditions of its charter, the bank had 'given what appears to Her Majesty's Government to be a sufficient security for their convertibility'. ¹³

The Oriental Bank's predecessors in Ceylon were the Bank of Western India and the Bank of Ceylon. Little appears to be known about the note issues of the former, but unissued examples survive for the Bank of Ceylon. The bank was founded in 1840; a branch was opened in Colombo in June 1841, and another in Kandy in 1843. Its notes were produced by Perkins Bacon & Petch. Unfortunately the printers' draft letter books do not appear to contain any correspondence relating to the designs, but the engraving record books note that they were working on the first one pound and two pound notes from 1840 December to 1841 February, and then on the five, ten, twenty and fifty pound notes from 1841 March to July.

All the denominations carried the same design, other than minor variations in lettering. It contained little of Perkins' characteristic machine-engraving but was emphatically British, with the Royal Arms in the top centre of the note, and a vignette of Britannia to the left. This familiar figure has her usual accessories of helmet, trident, shield with Union Jack, and lion. Almost predictably, an elephant and palm trees are in place behind her, but unexpectedly, a camel has also reappeared. see (Only the forepart of the camel is visible, tempting speculation that the engraver may have been unnecessarily concerned about putting the wrong number of humps!) Here again the elephant, palms and even the misplaced camel were surely intended as symbols of Ceylon, all positioned behind Britannia who has pride of place as a personification of the mother country. The dominant position of Britannia is a common feature on notes in British colonies, ...

The business of the Bank of Ceylon was heavily tied up with coffee growing, a fatal flaw given that the bank over-extended its resources in making loans for mortgages on coffee plantations. Most accounts state that the Bank failed in the late 1840s and that its business was taken over by the Oriental Bank around 1849. However, its name seems to have been retained for a few years, because the Perkins Bacon & Petch records show that they were still drawing and engraving one pound notes for the Bank of Ceylon in 1850 September and October. ¹⁴

12. The Bank of Western India was founded in Bombay in 1842, but three years later the head office was moved to London and the name changed to the Oriental Bank. It later absorbed the business of the Bank of Ceylon and was granted a Royal Charter to trade as the Oriental Bank Corporation. (See Compton Mackenzie, Realms of Silver. One hundred years of banking in the East (London, 1954), p. 10.)

13. Minute of Governor Sir Henry Wood. 28 December 1855, quoted in Fernando, as in n. 6, p. 26.

14. Engraving Book 1847-52, entries for 4 September and 7 October 1850. (RPS).