This is Samuel Pepys.
He lived over 300 years ago.
He wrote a very important diary.
In his diary he described two of the most important events in English history: The Plague in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666.
Watch: Samuel Pepys's diary
How do we know what life was like in the past?
Hundreds of years ago, there were no smart phones or cameras.
Many people couldn't read or write because they didn't go to school.
Back then, only important announcements like royal weddings were written down.
But one man wrote everything down in a private book, a diary.
His name was Samuel Pepys.
Samuel started to write, around 1660, about the things he did and who he saw.
He lived in London and began writing his diary when he was 26.
Samuel's diary tells us about ordinary things like going to the coffee house and what he ate for dinner.
He also wrote about other people, saying how he felt about them.
Because he didn't want anybody else to read it, he kept it safe and wrote some parts in a special code!
Samuel also lived through two of the most dramatic and terrible events in London’s history and wrote about them in his diary.
First, there was the Great Plague of 1665, an illness which killed thousands of people living in the capital city of London.
Samuel wrote: "How sad a sight it is to see the streets so empty of people".
Then, in 1666, London was almost destroyed by a huge fire.
He wrote about seeing the flames spreading, hoping his own things didn't catch fire.
He talked to people about how the Great Fire of London started and wrote: "They said it started in a bakery on Pudding Lane".
Nine years after he began, Samuel Pepys stopped writing because he thought he was losing his eyesight.
But the things he did write help us to understand everyday life at that time, and what living through two of London's most important events was really like.
What did Samuel Pepys do?
- Samuel Pepys was born in London in 1633.
- He went to Cambridge University.
- He could speak French and read Latin.
- He was a Member of Parliament (MP) and he worked for the Royal Navy.
Samuel Pepys lived through some of the biggest events of the time.
He lived through the Plague (1665) and he was in London during the Great Fire of London (1666).
He started writing a diary and recorded all sorts of details, from the weather to the Great Fire. He was especially pleased with his new watch, which had an alarm!
Samuel Pepys's diary
Extract from Samuel Pepys’ diary, 2nd September, 1666, as he saw the Great Fire of London:
“I went down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell's house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steeleyard, while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another.”
Did you know?
- Samuel Pepys saved his cheese and wine in the Great Fire of London by burying them in his garden.
Activity 1 – Sort the events in Samuel Pepys's life
Activity 2 – Samuel Pepys quiz
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