Likely order of appearance in circulation of the ETO war code notes 1940-1944

[Mac]

After a bit of study, I would suggest the following order for the appearance in circulation of each of the war codes. Some codes on different denominations might have entered circulation on the same occasion.


Lavery 10 Shillings 1940 H


Ireland 5 Pounds 1940 code A


Currency Commission Ireland One Pound 1941 T


Currency Commission Ireland Ten Shillings 1940 ETO code K


Currency Commission Ireland Five Pounds 1941 C


Ireland Currency Commission 10 Pounds 1941 E


Ireland 5 Pounds 1942 war code D


Ireland £1 1941 P


Currency Commission Ten Pounds 1942 code F


Currency Commission One Pound 1942 V

[Mac]

Central Bank of Ireland 5 Pounds 1943 N


Central Bank of Ireland 10 Pounds 1943 S war code


Central Bank of Ireland 1 Pound 1943 ETO code G


Central Bank of Ireland 10 Shillings 1943 L


Central Bank of Ireland Ten Pounds 1943 W


Central Bank of Ireland Twenty Pounds 1943 A war code


Central Bank of Ireland Five Pounds 1943 R


Central Bank of Ireland One Pound 1943 Y


Ireland Ten Shillings 1943 M


Central Bank of Ireland Ten Pounds 1943 war code B


Ireland Ten Shillings 1943 war code R


Central Bank of Ireland Five Pounds 1944 war code M


Central Bank of Ireland war code Ten Shillings 1943 E


Central Bank of Ireland One Pound 1944 war code E


Central Bank of Ireland One Pound 1944 code F


Central Bank of Ireland Ten Pounds 1944 code G

[gaelicyoda]

Quite an interesting topic Mac, I'd say you had a hell of a time compiling this list!

To try to compliment it, I'll take a stab at breaking these out by year (of their actual circulation versus their print date according to your list) and highlighting the ones I see as being out of sequence. Hopefully my read on these is correct:

Code: Select all

== 1940 ==
30.07.40 - 10/- (H)
12.09.40 - £5   (A)
== 1941 ==
14.03.41 - £1   (T)
07.11.40 - 10/- (K) <--
02.05.41 - £5   (C)
09.10.41 - £10  (E)
== 1942 ==
06.03.42 - £5   (D)
08.10.41 - £1   (P) <--
18.07.42 - £10  (F)
01.04.42 - £1   (V) <--
== 1943 ==
03.02.43 - £5   (N)
02.03.43 - £10  (S)
03.02.43 - £1   (G) <--
06.02.43 - 10/- (L) <--
23.09.43 - £10  (W)
11.02.43 - £20  (A) <--
14.08.43 - £5   (R) <--
05.07.43 - £1   (Y) <--
08.05.43 - 10/- (M) <--
== 1944 ==
03.02.44 - £10  (B)
13.10.43 - 10/- (R) <--
16.02.44 - £5   (M)
17.12.43 - 10/- (E) <--
03.06.44 - £1   (E)
15.09.44 - £1   (F)
09.09.44 - £10  (G) <--

Mainly the 10/- and £1 that seem to appear out of sequence chronologically, except for one date each for the £5, £10 and £20. Probably not that surprising since the 10/- and £1 would have had the highest print runs presumably and the most notes in circulation.
In fact it looks like the only 10/- run that was not printed and put into storage for some period of time was 30.07.40. The £1's had 14.03.41, but also the two dates in 1944.
1943 seems to have been a bit of a free-for-all!

[ThePloughman]

Nice to see the codes presented like this. Is there any logical pattern to the order in which the codes are used?

[Mac]

@Ploughman
I'm glad you asked me that

We (the then active members of the research group in the mid 1990s) spent many hours in the pub, and in the Bewley's Cafe Museum (long gone now) trying to work out the pattern for the ETO war codes.
There isn't one that we could find. Doesn't mean that there isn't one, just that we couldn't find one.
(They don't spell the name of Brennan's grandmother or something backwards either, though we didn't actually check that one out. We did check actual backward progressions, skipping letters, skipping groups of letters, arranging the letters in a circle, or a triangle, or a square-we really did do this! All of this was done, mostly on serviettes, or beermats and the like, to encourage the flow of ideas, etc. Tada, nada, nic, nothing, rien. It was good craic though, not your usual pub night.

Available data suggests that the code letters were chosen at random. Not the answer we want.

I, O, Q, U, X, and Z were not used. The first three might have been excluded because of resemblence to numerals, as they were excluded from use as prefix cyphers on then banknotes.

EDIT: U, X, Z may have been allocated, but not used due to the Emergency coming to an end first.

[Series B notes]

I'll email the Central Bank Of Ireland. They might have something to say about this.

[Series B notes]

No response

[Mac]

That's life! We numismatists generally have to do our own research! Sure there would be no fun in it if all th eanswers were handed on a plate

[Series B notes]

Is it possible it could be a code? By this, I mean something like this:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ERTGFDSWQAZXCVBHYUJNMKIOPL

EDIT:
Also, could the letters each be the start of words forming a sentence? (Or more than one)

Or could the 'secret message' be in Gaelic instead of English?