DEFACING BANK-NOTES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10219, 21 April 1911, Page 4

DEFACING BANK-NOTES.

"A bank note should lasiTsix months from the date of issue, but hundreds of them do not last a month," said a bank official recently, when questioned by a Lyttelton Times representative on the matter of defaced and defacing bank notes. The official added that the defacing of notes had become a serious matter. It was an offence under the Banking Act liable to a sever© penalty. "In our own office,'-' said the gentleman interviewed, "we have to withdraw 3000 notes from circulation every six weeks, cancel them, and have them taken off the register and destroyed." The limes representative inspected a pile cf notes on which were the regret of the last owner at parting with the notes. Some samples: "Good-bye, good-bye," "Bills, bills, bills," "Tata, my inoneykin," "Break the news to mother," "On a moral which ran,'' "Fare thee well, my Cleopatra," "We parted friends." The most objectionable of the disfigurements, itis stated, was the practice of tradesmen who use rubber stamps to affix their trade names on the back of notes for advertisement purposes. "One of these days they will get an

advertisement which they apparently do not at present anticipate," added the official.