This name derives from the Medieval English 'slop(e)' meaning a slop, outer garment or tunic, plus the agent suffix 'er' (one who does or works with something), and was originally given as an occupational name to a maker or seller of these garments. The surname is first recorded in the latter half of the 13th Century, (see below). The following quotation from Chaucer's 'Chanon Yemanne's Tale' reads 'His overest sloppe is not worth a mite' and in 1532 an entry in Henry V111's 'Privy Purse Expenses' runs 'item, the XX11 daye paied to Cicyll for sloppes ...8d.'. On March 5th 1591 Elizabeth, daughter of John Sloper, was christened in St. Mary's, Whitechapel, London in the Oxford University Register. Edward Hugh Lindsay Sloper (1826 - 1887) was a pianoforte teacher and composer of some renown. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Agatha le Slopere, which was dated 1273, in the Hundred Rolls of Huntingdonshire, during the reign of King Edward 1, known as the Hammer of the Scots, 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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