Irish
PAPER MONEY OF IRELAND
Private Bank Issues c.1700 to 1836 Tradesman and Sundry Issues c.1750 to date - Major Joint Stock Banks - Bank of Ireland 1783 to date - Belfast Banking Company 1827 to 1968 - National Bank of Ireland 1835 to 1964 - Northern Banking Company 1825 to date - Provincial Bank of Ireland 1825 to 1981 - Allied Irish Banks 1982 to 1993 - First Trust Bank 1994 to date - Ulster Banking Company 1836 to date - Miscellaneous Joint Stock Banks - Issuers 1825 to 1839 Non-Issuers - Republic of Ireland Issues - Legal Tender Notes - Lady Lavery Series A 1928 to 1977 - Modern Issues Series B 1976 to 1993 Series C 1992 to 2001 - Consolidated Bank Notes (Ploughman) 1929 to 1941 - Irish Republican Bonds 1865 to 1921
The Origins of Irish Banking
The origins of Irish banking can be traced back to 17th century Dublin when the first goldsmiths and other merchants started to issue receipts for coin deposited with them. These receipts started to circulate as a means of making payments while avoiding the withdrawal and physical transfer of the coins themselves. Paper currency had been born and the practice grew such that notes started to be issued payable to bearer without the specific backing of coin on deposit. Some goldsmiths started to grant credit and banking in its modern form became established, first in Dublin and then in the major provincial cities.
Joseph Demar is considered by some to be the first Irish banker. He was born in 1630 and arrived in Ireland in 1661, setting up in business in Dublin until his death in 1720. Richard Hoare was another early goldsmith turned banker whose business was established in Dublin before 1673.
During the 18th century commerce had to rely entirely on the small banking partnerships established by the former goldsmiths and other merchants. To these were added further small private banks set up by landed interests, but none was well capitalized and there was a steady stream of disruptive bankruptcies, causing pressure to build for the establishment of a ‘national’ bank to regulate and promote the Irish economy, along the lines of the Bank of England and the Bank of Scotland, both of whom had been formed at the end of the 17th century. Ireland’s economy also suffered at this time from restrictions imposed by Britain and an outflow of capital occasioned by the many absentee landlords.
Finally, on 10th May 1783, the Bank of Ireland was established by Royal Charter with capital of £600,000 Irish subscribed by over 200 Irish businessmen, landowners and clergymen. The bank was accorded a number of privileges, the key one being a monopoly on note issue in Ireland, excluding only private banks with a maximum of six partners, and it quickly achieved a position of dominance in Ireland’s economic life. The bank's first Governor was David la Touche, of the famous Dublin private banking family.
Napoleonic Wars and the Suspension Period
In March 1797, the onset of the Napoleonic Wars began to create substantial economic turbulence and banks were required to suspend gold payments. Metal coinage disappeared, leading to a proliferation of small denomination note issues throughout the country, some for amounts as low as 3 pence Irish (3d). The situation was such that a Committee of Enquiry was set up in 1804 to consider the problems of the Irish currency. Evidence presented to the Committee stated that there were at that time 225 issuers of bank notes, ‘silver notes’, and IOUs in Ireland. Many of these were issued by local tradesmen as well as by private bankers. We have tried for the first time to provide a comprehensive listing of all these early note issues. We are not in doubt, however, that many more remain to be recorded.
Compounding the need for small fractional notes was the exchange rate between the Irish and British pounds. This had been set in 1701 at one pound one shilling and eight-pence Irish (£1 1s 8d) to £1 British Sterling and was still thus when the currencies were officially set at par in January 1826, although both currencies had floated against gold between 1797 and 1821, creating some instability in the exchange rate during this period.
In the light of this exchange rate, it is perhaps more understandable why notes were issued for such odd amounts as seven shillings and seven-pence (7s 7d). This happened to be the Irish equivalent of one third of a British guinea, the principal gold coin seen in circulation up to 1797 and the dominant means of exchange in the North, where paper currency was less trusted. Naturally, notes also exist for half of this amount (3s 9½d) and there is even a note for 1s 7½d (the mathematically astute will recognise that there were 14 of these to a British guinea!)
Incidentally, ‘silver notes’ were defined in an Act of 1799 as notes for 9s, 6s and 3s 9½d, the only ones bankers outside Dublin were permitted to issue for amounts under five guineas. Due to the chronic shortage of small change, small notes were however essential and did not disappear until 1805, when a further Act prohibited all notes under £1 Irish but at least allowed private banks to resume issuance of notes of that denomination. Note issuance by the private banks peaked in 1803 at around £6,000,000, but declined thereafter, especially after 1815 when a period of post-war economic stagnation set in.
Perhaps, for readers below a certain age, we should mention that until 1971 and decimalisation in the UK and Ireland, British and Irish pounds were each divided into twenty shillings and each shilling divided into twelve pennies, a system which had been in place for several centuries.
After January 1826, banks issued notes in British Sterling only. Around this time guinea notes started to disappear too, as a result of the abolition of the guinea coin in the great British coinage reform of 1816. Financial crises in 1820 and 1825 thinned the ranks of the private banks, not helped by an Act of 1821 designed to modify the Bank of Ireland’s monopoly which prohibited them from issuing notes within 50 Irish miles of Dublin (about 63.6 statute miles).
Start of the Joint Stock Bank Era
1825 saw the first fundamental changes to the banking landscape when a further change of law proved decisive in the development of banking in Ireland. A new Act permitted the creation of joint stock banks in Ireland and for the first time the Bank of Ireland had to face real competition. They had exploited their previous monopoly and had not, for example, opened any branches outside Dublin, requiring the rest of Ireland to continue its reliance on the weak and often mistrusted private banks. The 1825 Act not only changed all that but also had the effect of spelling the beginning of the end for the private banks. The last private bank note issue ceased in 1836. Very few private banks survived in any form after that date.
Two distinctive features of the joint stock banks were widely spread ownership and the unlimited liability of their shareholders. This gave the public considerable confidence in them and in 1825 no fewer than three started business:
The Northern Banking Company in Belfast, to take over the business of a successful private bank. The Hibernian Joint Stock Bank in Dublin, to challenge the dominance of the Bank of Ireland, although, being Dublin-based, it was not permitted to issue notes despite energetic efforts to circumvent the law (see chapter on Miscellaneous Joint Stock Banks). The Provincial Bank of Ireland, with its head office in London, to establish a branch network in the provincial centres of Ireland following ‘Scottish principles’ of branch banking.
The Northern and the Provincial immediately set about opening branches around the country, the Dublin area of course excepted, and their burgeoning branch networks soon drove out, or absorbed, the few remaining private banks. Because of the Bank of Ireland monopoly in the Dublin region the Provincial’s first branch was in Cork, while the Northern concentrated initially on the main towns of Ulster. The Hibernian did not expand from its Dublin base until a single branch was opened, in Drogheda in 1843.
Once these banks had led the way, three more note issuing banks followed: the Belfast Banking Company in 1827, the National Bank of Ireland in 1835 and the Ulster Banking Company in 1836. The same year one further joint stock bank was created, the Royal Bank of Ireland, but being Dublin-based it was unable to issue notes.
For many decades after their establishment, individual banks remained closely identified with a particular religious persuasion, which, given the deep religious divides in Ireland, is perhaps not surprising. The three Belfast-based banks represented the Presbyterian community, while the Hibernian was backed predominantly by Catholic interests, whose intention it was to challenge that ultimate symbol of the Protestant ascendancy, the Bank of Ireland. Although established in London, the National was closely associated with one of its founding directors and first Governor, Daniel O’Connell, then a prominent and popular Nationalist Catholic politician. As a result it was nicknamed the ‘The Liberator’s Bank’. The Provincial utilised mostly English capital and Scottish bankers as branch managers to pursue its ‘Scottish principles’ while the Royal was established with the support of the Quaker community.
By 1836 the new joint stocks and the Bank of Ireland between them had opened a total of 130 branches across the country and total note circulation amounted to some £5,000,000. Not all joint stock banks were solidly founded or well run, however, and the 1830s saw the founding of and subsequent collapse of three note issuers, namely the Agricultural & Commercial Bank of Ireland (1834-1841), the Provident Bank of Ireland (1837-1840) and the Southern Bank of Ireland (1837). The collapse of the Agricultural & Commercial Bank in particular caused panic and a run on other banks, but the system survived thanks in no small measure to the Bank of Ireland which imported a quantity of gold to meet demand. Further information on these banks can be found in the chapter on Miscellaneous Joint Stock Banks.
The 1845 Irish Banking Act
In 1845 the Irish Banking Act finally lifted one of the most irksome of the Bank of Ireland’s remaining privileges, the prohibition on other banks from issuing notes within a 50 Irish miles radius of Dublin. At the same time the Act prohibited the creation of any new banknote issuing licences, thus confirming the position of the six commercial banks and freezing out the Hibernian and Royal, both of which had been keen to join their ranks. The Act also expressly allowed for the continued issuance of £1 notes, in contrast to England but in line with Scotland, although it restricted the issue of notes containing fractions of a £1, thus ending denominations such as 25s, 30s and so on.
The ‘Fixed Issue’ of the six banks under this Act was calculated on the average of their previous twelve months outstandings, as follows:
Bank of Ireland £3,738,428 - Belfast Banking Company £281,611 - National Bank of Ireland £852,269 - Northern Banking Company £243,440 - Provincial Bank of Ireland £927,667 - Ulster Banking Company £311,079
If a bank’s note issue exceeded these limits it was obliged to back the surplus with gold, creating a disincentive to expand its operations. Instead, the banks sought to fund growth through enhanced deposits. The six banks remained the only issuers of paper currency in Ireland until 1928 and continued to issue notes in Northern Ireland after 1928 until the amalgamations of the 1960s reduced their numbers to the current four. It should be noted that Bank of England notes also circulated in Ireland throughout this period, though the indigenous banks tried to discourage this.
The Great Famine
While Irish banking enjoyed a period of unrivalled stability after 1845, the country’s economy was about to enter the trauma of the Great Famine, which started the same year but took fierce hold only in 1846. Ireland was still very much an agrarian country and it was estimated that well over half the population lived on potatoes. The inevitable result was the most appalling and widespread suffering and misery. Thousands died of starvation and disease and many more emigrated to avoid a similar fate. As a result the country’s population fell by some 25%. Relief funds were organised and a loan of £8,000,000 was raised by the British Government in 1846 to alleviate the worst of the starvation. An unintended consequence of this was a short-lived boom on the back of substantial grain imports, but recession quickly followed and the economy inevitably suffered for many years. Indeed some would argue that the Irish economy did not fully recover from the effects of the Famine until well into the 20th century: the population of Ireland fell from just over 8,000,000 in 1841 to just 4,300,000 in 1911, and continued to fall thereafter. However, in the short term only the badly-run London & Dublin Bank, a non-issuer, failed, in 1848.
The 1879 Companies Act, passed in response to the many bankruptcies amongst its shareholders caused by the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank, enabled all the commercial banks to adopt limited liability. One by one the Irish joint stocks took this step and new note issues were prepared to reflect the banks’ changed status. Shareholders of the Bank of Ireland put pressure on the directors to follow suit but they were reluctant to amend its constitution. Eventually legal opinions were obtained which set shareholders’ minds at rest that their liability too was limited. As in England and Scotland, however, shareholders’ liability for the note issue remained unlimited, as indeed was recorded on the note issues of the National Bank and the Provincial Bank.
Independence and Partition
The onset of the First World War in 1914 saw inflation take off and note issuance levels rose sharply throughout the United Kingdom, including Ireland. It became necessary to suspend temporarily those provisions of the 1845 Act requiring banks to back excess issuance with gold and, to reassure the public, the note issues of the six commercial banks were made legal tender, although only until 1919. As the war continued, the Government persuaded the banks to remit most of their gold reserves to the Treasury to help pay for the war effort. The banks became concerned that this would leave them vulnerable to a run, as technically their notes were convertible to gold on presentation at their head office. Total Irish circulation reached some £32,000,000 by 1919, but no such run occurred even though political turbulence in Ireland increased following the 1916 Easter uprising.
In 1917 the continuing concentration in British banking made itself felt for the first time in Ireland when the Belfast Bank and the Ulster Bank were taken over, by the London City & Midland Bank and the London County & Westminster Bank respectively. The daily operations of the banks were not affected but the new owners of the Belfast did influence their decision to withdraw from banking in the Irish Free State.
In 1919, when legal tender status was withdrawn from their note issues, the banks requested a change in the law to make their notes payable only at their head offices in Ireland, rather than at every place of issue. This was agreed and in 1920 the Bank Notes (Ireland) Act was passed. The banks were now no longer required to list all their branches on their notes and all six quickly issued new notes to reflect this. Previous issues were withdrawn. They were also encouraged to reduce the size of their notes to something closer to the
151 x 84mm of the British Treasury £1 notes which also circulated in Ireland.
Meanwhile, in 1920, the Government of Ireland Act formalised the partition of Ireland by providing for the establishment of local parliaments in both Dublin and Belfast. The Dublin parliament was boycotted and after a period of negotiations between the British Government and Sinn Fein, a treaty was signed by which the Irish Free State was formally created in December 1922. A subsequent civil war broke out between pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions but ultimately the treaty stood.
At this time the only effective legal tender currency in both parts of Ireland consisted of British Treasury notes of £1 and 10s although the notes of the six Irish commercial banks continued to circulate freely throughout the whole of Ireland.
This situation ushered in one of the most fascinating and complex periods in Irish banknote history. Following the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 it was decided not to make any immediate changes but it was recognised that a distinctive currency and issuing authority needed to be established in the newly independent state. As a result a Commission of Inquiry was established in March 1926 whose main recommendations were incorporated in the Currency Act of September 1927:
The adoption of fixed parity with Sterling for the new Irish currency, the Saorstàt Pound (this resulted in the phrase ‘STERLING PAYABLE TO BEARER ON DEMAND IN LONDON’ appearing on the new Legal Tender Notes). The issue of Legal Tender Notes to be managed and controlled by a new Currency Commission. Existing note issues (in the Irish Free State) to be replaced by ‘Consolidated’ banknotes issued by the Currency Commission and redeemable in Irish legal tender (this required the commercial banks immediately to stop issuing notes in the Free State).
It followed from the Commission’s findings that new banknote issues were required - the Legal Tender Notes themselves, and a series of Consolidated banknotes representing each of those commercial banks still maintaining branch networks in the Free State. These were formally nominated as Shareholding Banks in the Currency Commission and comprised all six of the existing issuers except the Belfast Bank, which in August 1923 had sold its branches in the Irish Free State to the Royal Bank of Ireland, plus the three previously non-issuing banks, the Hibernian Bank, the Munster & Leinster Bank and of course the Royal Bank, eight banks in all.
In Northern Ireland, the Bankers (Northern Ireland) Act 1928 confirmed the status of the six existing issuers, although they had to prepare new issues for circulation strictly within the six counties of Northern Ireland. In a carefully co-ordinated action, the new Act was timed to come into force on the same day as the Free State legislation, on Monday 6th May 1929, although the Legal Tender Notes had already been issued on the 10th September 1928. All pre-1929 issues were withdrawn as quickly as possible.
Fifteen Banknote Issues for Four Million People
The consequence of all these changes was that in 1929 there were no fewer than fifteen note issues circulating in Ireland - those of the six commercial banks in Northern Ireland (which also saw some use south of the border), the eight Consolidated issues, plus the Legal Tender issue. The total rises to seventeen if you count British Treasury and Bank of England issues still widely used on both sides of the border.
As a rough guide to comparative rarities, the fifteen Irish issuers produced no more than an estimated 15,000,000 £1 notes in 1929, against 725,000,000 by the Bank of England who had in November 1928 taken over sole responsibility from the Treasury for the note issue in Britain. The Consolidated issues were seen by the Currency Commission as a transitional device and no more were issued after 1945 (and none is dated later than 1940). When they were formally withdrawn in 1953 they were not replaced.
More Recent Developments
In 1966 the National Bank’s branches in Ireland were acquired by the Bank of Ireland and their separate note issue ended. The same year the Provincial Bank merged with the Munster & Leinster Bank and the Royal Bank of Ireland to form the Allied Irish Banks, and its note issues were subsequently amended. In 1968 the Belfast Bank was taken over by the Northern Bank and its issues ceased.
In 1979 the fixed exchange rate of par between the Irish Punt and the Pound Sterling was discontinued. A few years later the Bank of Ireland decided to amend its notes to clarify that they were payable in Sterling.
In January 1999 the euro became the legal currency of Ireland. The changeover of all notes and coins in January 2002 saw the end of Legal Tender issues in Irish Punt. They ceased to be legal tender after 30th June 2002, although it is still possible to cash them in at the Central Bank of Ireland in Dublin and receive the equivalent of their face value in euros at the official conversion rate of 0.787564 Irish Punt to the euro.
The notes issued by the four surviving commercial banks in Northern Ireland continue to circulate freely and although they are not legal tender even in the North, they will generally be accepted by banks throughout the United Kingdom.
The value of a note is no more and no less than what two parties agree it to be. But for the purposes of providing useful pricing guidance in this catalogue we have drawn heavily on Michael O’Grady and Pam West’s many years of experience and extensive knowledge of the Irish market to supplement what we have gleaned from dealers’ lists and auction results. All prices are in £ Sterling. The value of an issued note (but not a specimen or trial note) will always include its face value.
Grading
Like pricing, grading is a matter of judgement. However, the following guide might be helpful to readers:
Early Irish notes have often survived in VG or worse condition. Due to their relative scarcity this should not be a deterrent to acquiring them: at least one of the authors has made the mistake of turning down a poor quality note and then never seeing the note type again! A feature of these early notes is that they have often been cut in two and later re-joined. This was a long established practice which survived into the 1920s, implemented in order to prevent loss in transit.
Cleaned notes are the bane of banknote collecting. They can be difficult to spot and should be avoided if at all possible. A cleaned note will lose its original sheen and strength of colour and often feels limp and lifeless. If chemicals have been used a telltale smell may linger. Unfortunately, many surviving Irish notes seem to have been cleaned or pressed. But this does not make them uncollectable as you may never get a better one! However, where undoctored notes are available, they are to be preferred.
Forgeries
Forgeries were a serious problem for the banks during the 18th and 19th centuries, and it will be observed that many survivors from this time are indeed forgeries. Some of these are of excellent quality (in fact a note marked ‘Forgery’ could be a genuine note where only the signature has been forged). It can therefore be difficult to differentiate between a forged note and the genuine original on which it is based. Clues may be found in minor details such as the printers’ imprint, the engraving of the vignette, the quality of the paper, the absence of a watermark or sometimes just the ‘feel’ of the note.
Forgeries whatever their quality may be taken as being generally faithful to the originals and given the rarity of genuine survivors they should be regarded as just as collectable, if cheaper to acquire. They have proved valuable for research purposes and often provide information not available elsewhere.
Post Bills
Many early note issuers also issued post bills which then circulated alongside the notes themselves. Technically, post bills were sola bills of exchange payable to bearer or to order, usually at seven or ten days sight but sometimes longer. Their purpose was to reduce the risk of robbery while in transit as they could be stopped if notice were given before the due date. They were issued both with and without fixed denominations. Design and format tended to be similar to regular bank note issues. Their use declined in the mid-19th century as the use of cheques grew in popularity. The early post bills are as collectable as the banknotes they circulated alongside.
Specimens, Colour Trials and Proofs
Specimen notes come from two sources - the banks and the printers. Banks had specimen notes prepared both for internal purposes and to provide to other banks, while printers’ specimens, usually identified by a printers’ stamp, are samples produced for archival, advertising or display purposes. Our listings attempt to cover all specimen notes including the many released in recent years from the De La Rue archives.
Colour trials by De la Rue, Bradbury Wilkinson and Waterlow were also produced for advertising and display purposes, the choice of a non-standard colour often deliberate to protect illicit use. Again, these are covered here wherever we have information on them.
Printers’ proofs have been the source of much useful knowledge on otherwise rare 19th century issues. The appearance on the market in the 1990s of notes from the Perkins Bacon archives was of great importance to our research effort, as were notes from the Charles Skipper & East archives.
Replacements
There have probably always been replacement notes, i.e. notes specially prepared to replace those damaged during the production process. In the past these were probably numbered by hand to replace the machine-numbered original. But from around 1970 Thomas De La Rue introduced a system of special prefixes for their replacement notes, with packs of new notes carrying an identifying mark on the wrapper to assist tellers when they were taken to cash and issued to the public.
Not all banks accepted the system straight away so it cannot be assumed that all De la Rue issues featured identifiable replacement notes after 1970. The first replacements to be recorded in the Irish series were the undated notes of the Bank of Ireland first issued in 1971. The De la Rue prefix of choice for a replacement note is ‘Z’ but they used a range of different letters for the Legal Tender Notes they printed for the Central Bank of Ireland. When the Central Bank started printing its own notes in 1974 it decided to continue to identify replacement notes, albeit using a different prefix system. As far as we are aware, other printers of Irish notes have not used identifying prefixes for replacements.
Collecting Hints
The Irish series is complex and fascinating and we hope this catalogue will help attract new collectors to the series. A new collector will probably seek to commence with more modern issues. An initial target might be to attempt to complete a type collection of current Northern Ireland issues. Add to this even a representative selection of Legal Tender (Lady Lavery) notes and you should gain a good impression of just how varied and colourful Irish notes can be. The Lady Lavery notes are considered classic designs and a type set of this most attractive and ever-popular series would grace any collection.
Many collectors seek to collect modern notes by signature variety, by date or by prefix. This catalogue seeks to cater for all these approaches. A greater collecting challenge might be to build up a type collection of all post 1929 notes from both sides of the border, but do not expect to complete this very quickly – few collections are complete on this basis.
More collectors are venturing into the world of pre-1929 all-Ireland issues, where most notes are scarce if not rare. We hope we have managed to throw much needed light on the early issues which should enable collectors to acquire these rare notes with confidence when they appear on the market. 1929 really is the great divide in the Irish series as the six issuing banks were required to withdraw all their old notes when the new currency regimes were introduced in the two halves of Ireland.
Perhaps the ultimate collecting challenge would be to try and find a note dated before the earliest known surviving Irish banknote, which dates back to 1732, a £20 note issued by the partnership of Samuel Burton and Daniel Falkiner of Dublin. It goes without saying that all 18th century issues are very rare but you never know, as new discoveries are still turning up.