Replace Notes of
Bradbury Wilkinson & Co

When DeLaRue printed notes for Ceylon in 1970 and Sri Lanka from 1987 they inserted a machine printed different Prefix to replace any damaged notes which accounted for on average about 2 or 3 replacement *-notes per thousand.

Bradbury Wilkinson & Co which did not use a replacement prefix would have needed to print on a note the Serial number of the damaged note. Assuming the same rate we could expect that 2 or 3 notes per thousand would need to have been printed with a letterpress with the required Serial number as discussed for 1000000 Serial notes with extra digit.

I find it interesting to understand Letterpress part of the printing process, and justifies study. It may be possible in some cases to distinguish between machine printed serials and those printed by Letterpress.

The following examples could also be a misprinted Serial from the Serial Number printer. However the probability of this kind of error is larger with the manual letterpress prints.

In 2024 August this note posted on FB was brought to my attention. The one before the last digit 2 of the Serial is misalinged and printed 0.5 mm lower of the 1977 Rs 2 note.
Searching through my banknote collection from 1951 to 1985 I found a slightly higher digit 6 and a lower digit 2. in the Upper-right Serial of my 1977, Rs 50 note.
Asking for contributions on the SLNS WhatsApp Group, this image was posted by Sanoon from his collection. The digit 5 is slightly higher in the lower left Serial of the 1979, Rs 100 note.

Please comment on this discussion.
If you find any Central Bank of Ceylon Notes 1985 and older, with a significantly non-regularly printed Serial Number please let kavanr @ gmail.com

I thank Dhananjaya Srimal an undergratuate at the University of Moratuwa at Katubeddha who said he found this note after searching through about 500 notes for errors. This website depends on such contributions.

Part of notes.lakdiva.org.lk a website for
Banknotes of Ceylon and Sri Lanka since 1785.