A REMARKABLE BANK NOTE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 937, 2 April 1880, Page 3

A REMARKABLE BANK NOTE.

Not long ago a well known collector of curiosities in Paris, who had devoted considerable sums of money to the gathering together of bank-notes of all countries and values, became the possessor nf a Bank of England L 5 note to which an unusually strange story was attached. The note was paid into a Liverpool merchant's office in tho ordinary way of business 61 years ago, and tho cashier, while holding it up to the light to test its genuineness, noticed some faint red marks, which on closer examination proved to he semi effaced words scrawled in blood between the printed lines and the blank margin of the note. Eventually tbo following sentence was made out :—“ If this note should fall into tho hands of John Doan, of Longhill, near Carlisle, he will learn hereby that his brother is languishing a prisoner at Algiers." Mr Dean was promptly communicated with by tho holder of the note, and he appealed to tho Government of tho day for assistance in his endeavour to obtain his brother’s release. The prisoner, who, as it subsequently appeared, had traced the above sentence on the note with a splinter of wood dipped in his own blond, had been a slave to the Dcy of Algiers for 11 years, when bis strange missive first attracted attention in a Liverpool counting-house. His family and friends long believed him dead. Eventually his brother, with the aid of the British authorities in tho Mediterranean, succeeded in ransoming him from tho Dey, and brought him home to England, where, however, he did not long survive his release, his constitution having been irreparably injured by exposure and privations in the Dcy's galleys.