Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Seven Dials, London WC; thus Dialler, Dialonian, a (criminal) frequenter of Seven Dials.

1837		Dickens ‘Seven Dials’ in Slater Dickens’ Journalism I (1994) 72: The stranger who finds himself in ‘The Dials’ for the first time [...] stands Belzoni-like, at the entrance of seven obscure passages. [...] A more primitive set of people than the native Diallers could not be imagined.
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 67: I used allays to my dossings in the Holy Land, and on the Dials.
1855		W. Phillips Wild Tribes of London 76: The respectability of the quarter now known as the ‘Dials’ shrunk [...] from the touch of the adjacent Rookery.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 12/2: I had, while we were over on the Dials, introduced Joe to Jack as an expert ‘cracksman’. [Ibid.] 59/2: I had noticed for some time several of the Dialonians in close confab.
1878		Besant & Rice By Celia’s Arbour III 195: All Whitechapel should ring with it, and the Dials too, and Ratcliffe Highway.
1880		R. Rowe Picked Up in the Streets 140: My gold-fish [...] I buys. Well, I have bought ’em at a pinch in the Dials, but it wouldn’t pay if I was allus to buy ’em there.
1883		J. Greenwood Tag, Rag & Co. 37: Sergeant Twitcher would pleasantly relate how [...] the prisoner at the bar was to be found in Bludger’s Kitchen in the Dials.
1886		C. Osborne ‘Later On’ 🎵 They live in the West they inform you with smiles, / But don’t you believe them, they doss down the Dials.
1895		Whitstable Times 16 Mar. 3: [He] invited most of the expert pickpockets then at liberty to a house in the ‘Dials’.
1906		D. Stewart Vultures of the City in Illus. Police News 22 Dec. 12/1: ‘In five minutes time we shall be in [...] the Dials’.
1910		D. Stewart Devil of Dartmoor in Illus. Police News 17 Sept. 12/3: ‘What a game [...] How the lads in the Dials would grin’.
1963		B. Naughton Alfie I ii: There was a fat young bird from the Dials I was having it off with.