Great Britain One Pound Treasury Note 1914 King George V
Obverse: Profile portrait of King George V at upper left, Saint George killing the Serpent at upper right, “ONE POUND” at centre.
Text: “UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. One pound Currency Notes are Legal Tender for the payment of any amout. Issued by the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury under the Authority of Act of Parliament (4 & 5 Geo.V.ch.14)”.
Designed at Royal Mint from sketches by Frederick Atterbury.
Signed by Sir John Bradbury, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury from 1913–1919.
Date of first issued: 23 October 1914.
Date ceased to be legal tender: 12 June 1920.
Color: Black on white (printed on one side only).
Size: 149 mm x 83 mm.
Design: George Eve.
Printed by De La Rue & Co on banknote paper.
The First World War (1914-18) placed great demands on Britain's gold supply: the Government needed gold to meet the costs of the war, and the public tended to hoard gold as private security in this time of uncertainty. This depleted the circulation of gold sovereigns and half sovereigns (coins worth one pound and ten shillings, respectively). To supplement the scarce coinage the British Treasury began to issue paper notes for these amounts.The first pound notes were issued on 7 August 1914, only three days after war was declared. Because they were produced in a such a hurry, the printing and design were very simple, and a more elegant note was issued in October 1914. The note shown here is from this second series, decorated with a bust of King George V, with St George and the Dragon shown on the right. Like the first series, the notes were signed by Sir John Bradbury, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and they were soon nicknamed Bradburys. Later issues carried more elaborate designs, printed in colour with larger, patriotic images of St George and the Dragon and Britannia.Treasury notes continued to be produced until 1928, when the Bank of England took over responsibility for issuing the one pound and ten shilling notes.
John Swanwick Bradbury, 1st Baron Bradbury (23 September 1872 – 3 May 1950) was a British economist and public servant.
Bradbury was born in Crook Lane, Winsford, Cheshire, the son of John Bradbury and Sarah Cross. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School, The King's School, Chester and Brasenose College, Oxford, and joined the Civil Service in 1896. He served as Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer H. H. Asquith from 1905 to 1908, as Principal Clerk in the Treasury and First Treasury Officer of Accounts from 1908 to 1911, as Joint Permanent Secretary to the Treasury from 1913 to 1919 and as the Principal British Delegate to the Reparations Commission in Paris from 1919 to 1925. During the First World War he was the government’s chief economic adviser.
He was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1909, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1913, and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) for his services as Principal Reparations Commissioner in the 1920 New Year Honours. In the 1925 New Year Honours, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Bradbury, of Winsford in the County of Chester.
Lord Bradbury married Hilda Maude Kirby, daughter of William Arthur Kirby, in 1911. He died in May 1950, aged 77, and was succeeded in the barony by his eldest son John.
Treasury notes signed with Bradbury's name have been known as "Bradburys" or "Bradbury Pound".
The UK Permanent Secretary to the Treasury is the most senior civil servant at HM Treasury. The post originated as that of Assistant Secretary to the Treasury in 1805; that office was given new duties and renamed in 1867 as a Permanent Secretaryship.
The position is generally regarded as the second most influential in Her Majesty's Civil Service; Andrew Turnbull (Permanent Secretary from 1998 to 2002) and Gus O'Donnell (2002–2005) were Permanent Secretaries to the Treasury who then became Cabinet Secretary, the most influential post.
Previous incumbents have not always maintained the political neutrality expected of civil servants; in 1909 Sir George Murray was involved in lobbying various Crossbench peers in the House of Lords to reject the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposed budget.
Since March 2009, Tom Scholar has served as the Treasury's Second Permanent Secretary. The post of Head of the Government Economic Service had been held by Sir Nicholas Stern (now Lord Stern of Brentford) until June 2007, since when it has been jointly held by Vicky Pryce, Chief Economic Adviser and Director General of Economics at BIS, and Dave Ramsden, Managing Director, Macroeconomic and Fiscal Policy Directorate.