Recruiting in London is almost exclusively circumscribed to the district stretching between the St. George’s Barracks, Trafalgar Square, and Westminster Abbey.
Throughout London it is known that all information concerning service in the army can be obtained in this quarter, and intending recruits troop down to this neighbour- hood in shoals, converging, as the culminating point of their peregrinations, towards the celebrated public-house at the corner of King Stree and Bridge Street.
It is under the inappropriate and pacific sign-board of the “ Mitre and Dove ” that veteran men of war meet and cajole young aspirants to military honours.

From 'Street Life in London', 1877, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith