This feature first appeared in January 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.
As the New Year is upon us, we've compiled a handful of new year’s resolutions made by Londoners of times past. Our ancestors have been charging into January with good intentions re. less drinking, swearing, unkindness and excessive partying for centuries.
Giving up wine and theatre
Samuel Pepys, 1661-1662
Putting everybody’s Dry Januarys to shame, here comes Samuel Pepys — profligate wine-drinker and theatre-goer — with a resolution to forswear wine and theatre till the following Michaelmas. The reason seems to be a still pretty relevant mix of 1/ a craving for a more wholesome lifestyle (a common thread in his diaries is wild abandon, followed by mild repentance), and 2/ his spiralling cost of living.
"…I have newly taken a solemn oath about abstaining from plays and wine, which I am resolved to keep according to the letter of the oath which I keep by me…"
— from the Diary of Samuel Pepys, 31 December 1661
Pepys made good on the oath to his own satisfaction, if not abstaining completely for a full year (intermissions include 29 September 1662: "This day my oaths for drinking of wine and going to plays are out, and so I do resolve to take a liberty to-day, and then to fall to them again…"), charting it as a huge success, and one he intends to repeat, in his diary at the end of the year:
"…lived a very orderly life all this year by virtue of the oaths that God put into my heart to take against wine, plays, and other expenses, and to observe for these last twelve months, and which I am now going to renew, I under God owing my present content thereunto…"
— from the Diary of Samuel Pepys, 31 December 1662
Giving up resolutions, kind of
Virginia Woolf, 1931
"…Here are my resolutions for the next 3 months; the next lap of the year.
To have none. Not to be tied.
To be free & kindly with myself, not goading it to parties: to sit rather privately reading in the studio.
To make a good job of The Waves.
To stop irritation by the assurance that nothing is worth irritation…
…Sometimes to read, sometimes not to read.
To go out yes—but stay at home in spite of being asked.
As for clothes, to buy good ones…"
— from the Diaries of Virginia Woolf, 2 January 1931
Giving up pessimism
Charles Dickens, 1836
"And we are bound by every rule of justice and equity to give the New Year credit for being a good one, until he proves himself unworthy the confidence we repose in him."
— Charles Dickens, from Bell’s Life in London, 3 January 1836 via The Charles Dickens Page. Stretching it to call this a resolution, maybe, but I think the splash of unbridled optimism for the year ahead from Dickens deserves a place in the list.
Giving up bitchiness. Sometimes.
James Agate, 1942
"To refrain from saying witty, unkind things, unless they are really witty and irreparably damaging…"
— from the diaries of James Agate, 2 January 1942 via Diaries of Note.
Giving up swearing
Assorted Londoners, 1959
Several strong moments in this collection of interviews with Londoners about their new year’s resolutions in 1959, but my favourite: this woman’s cheerful announcement that hers is to stop swearing, but that she probably won’t keep it because, "office life is very trying". Lady, we hear you.
