Westminster, London, UK
(John Thomson / Science & Society Picture
Library / Getty)
The British recruiting sergeant was a soldier tasked with inducing volunteers to enlist into the army. Such sergeants become notorious for using underhand and deceptive methods to secure a new recruit. In this picture, the sergeants stand on the corner of King Street and Great George Street in London, now part of Parliament Square, across the road from the sixteenth-century edifice of Saint Margaret’s church.
The photograph is by John Thomson and taken from his Street Life in London with words by Adolphe Smith. Thomson worked in partnership with journalist Smith between 1873 to 1877 to portray the daily lives of Londoners, and in particular the poorest in the city. Street Life in London was published as a monthly subscription, before being released as a single volume.
‘Our system of recruiting, the soldier’s long term of service, and the restrictions upon his marriage, act as a direct encouragement to drunkenness and debauchery in a great national establishment, which might, under different arrangements, be converted into a popular training school of the highest intellectual and moral value.’
The British Army in 1868, Sir Charles E. Trevelyan
