12 Penalty for defacing bank notes.
If any person prints or stamps, or by any like means impresses, on any bank note any words, letters or figures, he shall, in respect of each offence, be liable on summary conviction to a penalty not exceeding ...
... one pound. (as originally enacted)
... level 1 on the standard scale. (as it currently stands)

"It is illegal to deface our banknotes, for example by printing or writing on them. This is an offence under the Currency and Banknotes Act 1928."

"Under the Currency & Banknotes Act 1928 it is illegal to deface banknotes by printing, writing or impressing upon them words, letters or figures."

"... you often see money with bits of writing on them. I think there's a limit but a name or a few words is fine." "Bank clerks regularly write on piles of notes after counting a load off."

"Have you never received a note with writing on it? Where the shop keeper has scribbled numbers, or names. I received a note before with a poem written on for Caroline..."

"I work in a shop and I think nothing of taking notes that have been written on, and I think everyone (my managers included) would think I was a bit of an idiot if I attempted to refuse them."

Wae worth thy power, thou cursed leaf!
Fell source o' a' my woe and grief!
For lack o' thee I've lost my lass!
For lack o' thee I scrimp my glass!
I see the children of affliction
Unaided, through thy curst restriction:
I've seen the oppressor's cruel smile
Amid his hapless victim's spoil;
And for thy potence vainly wished,
To crush the villain in the dust:
For lack o' thee, I leave this much-lov'd shore,
Never, perhaps, to greet old Scotland more.

"He had planned to flee his debts and abandon Jean Armour by going to the West Indies to oversee work on a plantation, and had actually recorded his feelings in Lines Written On A Banknote in 1786. Instead he went straight to Edinburgh, where he was hosted by all the gliterati and nobles of the time, including the Select Society of which he became a member."