Atdtda22: [42.1i] Not fashionable, 607

[Paul Nightingale]

[607.39] ... Seven Dials ...

An American view, from the late-nineteenth century:

It is not very far from Covent Garden to Seven Dials. This place is so
called from the fact that by the meeting of seven streets seven corners are
formed, at each of which there was once, it is said, a dial. This place has
a reputation like that of Five Points in New York; and it is remarkable that
the meeting of many streets should in both cities have been followed by a
degradation of the neighborhood. But Seven Dials, although I found that it
richly deserved the ill odor in which it stands, is not, as Five Points is,
or was, the lowest and most wretched part of the town. There are
neighborhoods in London which are to Seven Dials as Seven Dials is to May
Fair.

From: Richard Grant White, England without and within, Boston: Houghton
Mifflin & Co, 1881, 109. 

An earlier reference in AtD: "The Last Judgment (XX) was a streetwalker from
Seven Dials, sometimes accompanied by her pimp ..." (226).