At over 125 years old this letter of exchange is in truly remarkable condition.
Dated Paris 30th March 1880. It is for the sum of 2,353 francs.
It has been stamped officially by Curcier & Adet of Sydney.
It has been signed for on the back by Thomas Fitzgerald.
Please see the picture.
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By the 17th century, bills of exchange were being used for domestic payments in England. Cheques, a type of bill of exchange, then began to evolve. Initially they were called drawn notes, because they enabled a customer to draw on the funds that he or she had in the account with a bank and required immediate payment. These were handwritten, and one of the earliest known still to be in existence was drawn on Messrs Morris and Clayton, scriveners and bankers based in the City of London, and dated 16 February 1659.
In 1717, the Bank of England pioneered the first use of a pre-printed form. These forms were printed on “cheque paper” to prevent fraud, and customers had to attend in person and obtain a numbered form from the cashier. Once written, the cheque was brought back to the bank for settlement. The suppression of bank notes in eighteenth-century England further promoted the use of cheques.
Until about 1770, an informal exchange of cheques took place between London banks. Clerks of each bank visited all the other banks to exchange cheques, whilst keeping a tally of balances between them until they settled with each other. Daily cheque clearing began around 1770 when the bank clerks met at the Five Bells, a tavern in Lombard Street in the City of London, to exchange all their cheques in one place and settle the balances in cash. See bankers’ clearing house for further historical developments.
In 1811, the Commercial Bank of Scotland, it is thought, was the first bank to personalize its customers’ cheques, by printing the name of the account holder vertically along the left-hand edge.In 1830 the Bank of England introduced books of 50, 100, and 200 forms and counterparts, bound or stitched. These cheque books became a common format for the distribution of cheques to bank customers.
In the late 19th century, several countries formalized laws regarding cheques. The UK passed the Bills of Exchange Act in 1882, and India passed the Negotiable Instruments Act (NI Act) 1881; which both covered cheques.
A Time In Australian History When:
The population of greater Melbourne was 282,947 and of Sydney was 224,939.
Bushranger Captain Moonlight (real name Andrew George Scott) hanged in Sydney.
In June Ned Kelly was captured in Glenrowan, Victoria. In November he was hung and the judge who sentenced him, Redmond Barry died just 12 days later.
The first successful shipment of frozen mutton from Australia arrived in London aboard the SS Strathleven.
