Slopping out is the emptying of
buckets of
human waste when the
cells are unlocked in
prisons in the morning. Inmates without a
toilet in the cell have to use a bucket or
chamber pot while locked in during the night. The reason that some cells do not have toilets is that they date from the
Victorian era and were therefore never originally designed to have toilets. As a result, there is no space in which to put a toilet, together with the expense and difficulty of installing the necessary plumbing.