The Diary of Samuel Pepys is a unique record of life in the 17th Century. Pepys (1633–1703) was an English civil servant who recorded his day-to-day activities from 1660 to 1669. During that time, he witnessed the restoration of the British monarchy; the Great Fire of London; the plague epidemic of 1665; and the second Anglo-Dutch war -- all of which he wrote about from his own perspective.

More important to this site, he also detailed more mundane things: his entertainments, his eating, his drinking, his sexual misbehaviors, and his pooping.

The diaries are so frank that an unexpurgated edition wasn't published until the 1970s. Reading it makes one understand how poop was as much a concern then as it is now; perhaps more so, considering the lack of modern plumbing and modern medicine.

Below you will find a number of excerpts about life in the 17th Century that 21st Century PoopReporters will surely find fascinating.

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7 February 1660
Mr. Moore told me of a picture hung up at the Exchange, of a great pair of buttocks shitting of a turd into Lawson's mouth, and over it was writ "The Thanks of the House." Boys do now cry "Kiss my Parliament" instead of "Kiss my arse," so great and general a contempt is the Rump come to among all men, good and bad.

29 April 1660
This day I put on first my fine cloth suit, made of a cloak that had like to have been beshit behind a year ago the very day that I put it on.

25 May 1660
I went, and Mr. Mansell and one of the King's footmen, with a dog that the King [Charles II] loved (which shit in the boat, which made us laugh and me think that a King and all that belong to him are but just as others are) went in a boat by ourselfs.

28 May 1660
This night I had a strange dream of bepissing myself, which I really did; and having kicked the clothes off, I got cold and found myself all muck-wet in the morning and had a great deal of pain in making water, which made me very melancholy.

22 June 1660
Among other things, [Mrs. Turner] told me for certain how my old Lady Middlesex beshit herself the other day in the presence of the King, and people took notice of it.

7 October 1660
Discoursing concerning what if the Duke [of York] should marry her, my Lord [the Earl of Sandwich] told me that among his father's many old sayings that he had writ in a book of his, this is one: that he that doth get a wench with child and marries her afterward it is as if a man should shit in his hat and then clap it upon his head.

20 October 1660
This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar in lieu of one that Sir W. Batten had stopped up; and going down into my cellar to look, I put my foot into a great heap of turds, by which I find that Mr. Turners house of office is full and comes into my cellar, which doth trouble me; but I will have it helped.

8 November 1660
From thence with him as far as Ratcliffe, where I left him going by water to London; and I (unwilling to leave the rest of the officers) went back again to Deptford; and being very much troubled with a sudden loosenesse, I went into a little alehouse at the end of Ratcliffe and did give a groat for a pot of ale and there I did shit.

22 April 1662
He, among other Storys, telling us a story of the monkey that got hold of the young lady's cunt as she went to stool to shit, and run from under her coats and got upon the table, which was ready laid for supper after dancing was done.

31 May 1662
My health pretty well, but only wind doth now and then torment me about the fundament extremely.

7 September 1662
Thence to my Lord's, where nobody at home but a woman that let me in, and Sarah above; whither I went up to her and played and talked with her and, God forgive me, did feel her; which I am much ashamed of, but I did no more, though I had so much a mind to it that I spent in my breeches.

25 September 1662
This evening I sat a while at Sir W. Batten's with Sir J. Mennes &c, where he told us, among many other things, how in potugall they scorn to make a seat for a house of office. But they do shit all in pots and so empty them in the river.

25 May 1663
She gone, I up and there hear that my wife and her maid Ashwell had between them spilt the pot of piss and turd upon the floor and stool and God knows what, and were mighty merry washing of it clean. I took no great notice, but merrily.

28 June 1663
Early in the morning my last night's physic worked and did give me a good stool; and then I rose and had three or four stools and walked up and down my chamber.

7 July 1663
Being come home, I find my stomach not well, for want of eating today my dinner as I should do, and so am become full of wind; I called late for some victuals and so to bed, leaving the men below in the cellar emptying the turds up through Mr. Turner's own house; and so, with more content, to bed late.

8 July 1663
And then down into the cellar, and up and down with Mr. Turner to see where his vault for turds may be made bigger, or another made him; which I think may well be.

26 July 1663
Up and to the Wells [at Epsom], where a great store of Citizens; which was the greatest part of the company, though there were some others of better Quality. I met many that I knew; and we drunk each of us two pots and so walked away - it being very pleasant to see how everybody turns up his tail, here one and there another, in a bush, and the women in their Quarters the like.

27 July 1663
So to White-hall and by water to the Bridge; and so home to bed - weary and well pleased with my Journy in all respects. Only, it cost me about 20s.; but it was for my health and I hope will prove so. Only, I do find by my riding a little swelling to arise just by my Anus. I had the same the last time I rode, and then it fell again; and now it is up again about the bigness of the bagg of a Silke worme. Makes me fearful of a Rupture, but I will speak to Mr. Hollyard about it, and I am glad to find it now, that I may prevent it before it goes too far.

29 July 1663
...and so home and there going to Sir W. Batten (having no stomach to dine at home, it being yet hardly clean of last night's turds).