ABOUT BANK NOTES.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12754, 29 March 1910, Page 4

ABOUT BANK NOTES.

At the Bank of England privileged visitors are sometimes shown the oldest bank note, for £555, with tlio date "19th Xber, 1699." The memoranda written across the note shows that payment was made by three instalments. The bank notes of that period were printed from engraved plates, blank spaces being left for the date, the signature-, the number, and the amount. Hie water-mark can be clearly seen and in texture and general appearance the notes were, says the "Globe" very similar to those of to-day. It was not until 1797 that bank notes were issued under five pounds in value; but owing to a financial crisis an Act of Parliament was hastily passed authorising such an issue. The - first batch of the new notes was, however, dated a day before the Act was passed, so it had to be made retrospective. Perhaps the greatest curiosity the j bank possesses is a note for £1000,, the sum Lord Cochrane paid as a fine for his supposed connection with a fraud on the public, with which he. really had nothing to do. He endors-' cd the note thus: "My health having suffered by long and close confinement and my oppressors having resolved to deprive me of property or life, I submit to robbery to protect myself from murder, in the hope that I shall live to bring the delinquents to justice. — Cochrane." He wrote from the Grated Chamber of King's Bench Prison. Another curiosity believed to be unique, is a note for. a million pounds, bearing the date 1782. The Bank has' only issued four such notes, one of wliicli was in the possession of Samuel - ltodgers, the x>oet. * He is said to have had it framed and hung about his drawing-room mantelpiece. The component parts of a bank note are the ink, paper, water-mark, signature, -printing and engraving. The ink is now made from naptha smoke, which is intensely black, hard* and dry • formerly the ink was made from the charred remains of tho stones and skins of Rhenish grapes. Several thousand reams of the paper are manufactured yearly. Once thieves 'broke into the mills and stole some of the bank-note paper, but the whole gang was captured. In order that the printer shall know if the water-mark is the right side up, one corner of the note is rubbed. The penalty for forging the watermark used to be death, and is now penal servitude. Notes are cancelled by having the corner bearing the signature cut off, and in the vaults of the Bank there- are always several sacks full of these corners, which are burned periodically. Bank of England notes are printed in the Bank itself. They are arranged in pairs, which leave the machine pressed and dried. The notes are delivered automatically to the receiving clerk, and the numbers they bear correspond with thoso registered on the dials of the printing machine.