People Of Note – Part One

Yesterday was the last day that the £20 note featuring Edward Elgar would be officially classed as legal tender, having been gradually replaced by the new Adam Smith design over the last few years.

Unless by some quirk of birth you find yourself in line to the throne, it is unlikely you will ever appear on a bank note. But what exactly does one have to achieve in order to get one’s phizog on the back of Her Majesty?

There are no official criteria by which this decision is made. Ultimately, it is the choice of the Governor of the Bank of England based on a shortlist compiled by the bank, very often based on suggestions by the public. The only conditions set out by the Bank of England for potential candidates are that they have shown an “indisputable contribution to their particular field of work and about whom there exists sufficient material on which to base a banknote design.”

That doesn’t give us hopefuls much to go on, so I’ve decided to look at some of the people who have managed to grace our nation’s coke funnels, and try to figure out what makes a person noteworthy.

The onset of decimalisation transformed British currency and along with this brave new world came new designs for the notes. With improving printing techniques and concern over forgery, the notes introduced in the seventies were more complicated and detailed than their forbears. Previous notes had only contained images of the Queen and that other noble lady, Britannia. Now, the Bank of England decided to put famous historical figures on their currency.

The first of these notes, known as the “D series” or the “pictorial series” were in virgin territory. Who deserved to go on the money, sharing equal platform with our own dear Lizzie?

A fifty pence note with the image of Sir Walter Raleigh was proposed, and even designed, only to be aborted when the rate of inflation made the introduction of a fifty pence coin more sensible. So it is that we go to the world of literature for England’s first banknote celebrity.

We start by setting the bar high, as the first person to have his receding hairline transcribed on to a Bank of England note was the most famous English writer of all time, and the scourge of GCSE students, William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616).

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The £20 note featuring Shakespeare was first issued in 1970 and officially stayed in circulation until 1993, making it the longest standing design of any modern English banknote. It actually featured a picture of a statue of Shakespeare, rather than a straight forward portrait, which showed the bard lounging coyly across a pile of books. It was complemented with the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, probably Shakespeare’s most accessible play.

Secondly, we have the £5 note in use for twenty years from 1971 which featured The Duke of Wellington (1769 – 1852).

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Wellington it seems was commemorated for his exploits on the battlefield rather than his high political office, as it was a battle scene that accompanied his portrait on the reverse of the fiver. Wellington stood nobly with arms defiantly crossed, medals pinned to his puffed-out chest. Here was a man who looked like he didn’t approve of being put on a five pound note when there was a place on the fifty going begging.

Next up we have Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910). Nightingale’s role in the improvement of medical hygiene is grossly exaggerated in folk memory but there is no doubt she had an enormous effect on the working practices of hospitals and the training of nurses through her campaigning, and intensive statistical research.

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The note design showed a remarkably young looking Nightingale and, somewhat inevitably, chose to dwell on her reputation as the “lady with the lamp” as she tended to the wounded in a medical camp in Crimea. The £10 note lasted considerably longer than the fighting in the Crimea, and even managed to survive the money grabbing Thatcher years, being in circulation from 1975 to 1994.

The first and only person to appear on a £1 note was physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727). The note was issued in 1978 and was official tender for ten years, being phased out after the introduction of the one pound coin in 1983.

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The design showed Newton sitting beneath an apple blossom but was at least subtle enough not to have an apple falling through the sky. Also featured were Newton’s numerous achievements in the form of a reflecting telescope, an optical prism and his Principia Mathematica. The detail was such that the words appearing on the open pages of the book were accurate to the relevant page in the actual Principia.

The first issue of notes with historical figures were known as the “D series,” and the last of this set was the £50 note, in use from 1981 to 1996. It featured the esteemed architect Sir Christopher Wren (1632 – 1723).

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The Bank of England chose to commemorate Wren’s most well known work, St. Paul’s Cathedral, with both a landscape picture and a floor plan. It was a project he worked on for over 40 years, and a fitting depiction of his legacy. Although how well his elaborate wig and flowing gown would have served him on the building site is up for debate.

Throughout the seventies and eighties, these were the people who stared up at us every time we emptied our wallets to buy a new pair of flares, a space hopper, or a breeze block mobile phone. But the nineties brought with them a new attitude, a new outlook, and new money.

For the next part, see “E series” notes.

Words by Allen Turing. Images from the Bank of England.