Q: This Doulton Burslem piece has been in my family for as long as I can remember and then some! It has gray flowers on a white background. It’s about 9 inches high and 9 inches across the top, which has a handle with an opening on either side. I remember my mom saying it was a “slop bucket or pail.” Can you tell me what it was actually used for and possibly the value of it?
A: Slop buckets were a common household item in the 19th century. Food scraps, bones, and other garbage were put into the bucket after each meal. At the end of the day the contents were fed to the hogs, dumped onto a compost heap, thrown down the hole in the outhouse, or just tossed out the door. Your slop bucket probably had a cover and a caned or wicker bail (handle) that fastened onto the two knobs on the sides of the pot. Doulton & Co. was founded in Burslem, England, in about 1882. Your pot has an early mark used from about 1881 to 1902. In 1891 the word “England” was added, so the mark on your slop bucket was used from about 1881 to 1891. Value of your slop bucket: $100-$125.
Yes, my grandmother told of her mother delivering a baby into a slop jar/bucket and being too weak to save it. So I would say chamber pot. Any kitchen scraps were made into soup or fed to hogs.
Although members of the Doulton family were in the pottery business earlier the name Doulton & Company was first used in 1882.
-Terry
I am not sure of all the uses. I’m old, but not old enough to remember using one!
I am writing because the Burslem location of Doulton, later Royal Doulton, was in 1815, I think. Prior to that the Doulton company was located in Lambeth, near London.
The Doulton company, prior to 1815, made sewer pipes and bathroom tubs, showers, and toilets. I saw a display of some of the most unusual ones at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the summer of 1979.
When they bought the plant at Burslem, they began making many specialty wares and pieces, some of which are quite collectible. They made earthenware dinnerwares and did not join the trend to making china, particularly bone china dinnerwares until 2 years after John Doulton died in 1889. They made some exquisite china wares and continued with earthenwares until 1960, when the earthenwares were replaced by what they called Fine Translucent china, which held up somewhat better with dishwasher use. The only earthenwares they made after that were series wares. These were collector plates illustrating characters from Dickens, Shakespeare, and others.
Because of it’s tremendous output, it became sort of the General Motors of the potteries.
A slop bucket like this was not used to collect scraps from the kitchen or the table. It was part of a bedroom set comprising a wash bowl, large water jug, soap dish, a chamber pot (and sometimes many more smaller pieces such as hair tidies and pin trays). They were used in the days before inside bathrooms. The water would be poured into the large wash bowl and when it was finished with it was emptied into the bucket so that it could be carried downstairs more easily. The funnel shaped inner helped the water to be poured into the bucket and then many had a lid which would prevent the water spilling out. Some inners had a series of small holes instead of a large one in the middle – so that the bar of soap in the wash bowl did not go into the bucket of slop water.