Proof of the Month

The top Providence Series of 1882 brown back proof has a title block laid in using the patented lettering process invented by BEP Chief Engraver George Casilear. The plate was certified on April 7, 1883. It was replaced (bottom) by a plate with a layout fabricated from hand-engraved elements certified on April 27, 1897. The reason for the change was that plates made using Casilear’s process were deemed to be inartistic because they looked mechanical. A total of 35,696 sheets of $5 Series of 1882 brown backs were issued through the bank. The changeover bank sheet serials between the varieties were 28,000/28,001. Sheet 28,001 was numbered May 12, 1897. Proofs from these two plates were brought by Thomas Morris—discharged nine days previously as Chief of the BEP Engraving Department—to show to a Senate committee as he testified before it. The committee was investigating the Bureau of Engraving and Printing with one of its primary purposes to determine the cause for the design debacle that led newly elected President McKinley’s Secretary of the Treasury Lyman Gage to pull the plug on the just released Series of 1896 Educational silver certificates and to order their replacement as soon as possible. That order took until the Series of 1899 could be made available two years later.

The problem with the Educational notes was that bankers and merchants reviled them because they were difficult to sort. Their primary fault was that the counters in their corners were hard to read. The committee was attempting to fix the blame for the fiasco so was grilling Morris, who served as Chief Designer in his position at the Bureau when the Educational notes were moving from concept to production. At the time of his testimony on July 8, 1897, Morris was terminally ill with a malignant tumor behind his left eye. He showed the committee the Providence pair as part of his attempt to demonstrate that the Engraving Department was committed to elevating the quality of engraving within the BEP. He stated: “There were a great many of these national currency notes that were changed wherever it was possible. Where a plate was worn out I attempted to make these changes so as to improve the service.” A member of the committee followed up with this line of questioning: Q— “You have a large number of those copies, I see.” A— “Yes, sir.” Q— “Do you know it is contrary to law for you to have any of these impressions in your possession?” Morris died on Jan. 18, 1898, at age 45.