Acourt record unearthed in a London archive detailing George Orwell’s 1931 conviction for being ‘drunk and incapable’ confirms his account of the incident, lending foundation to the lore surrounding Orwell’s truthfulness as a writer.

The document, the subject of a University College London paper published in the journal Notes and Queries, is the first solid external evidence of any of Orwell’s ‘down and out’ experiences and backs up his account of the incident, which he later outlined in the 1932 essay ‘Clink’.

On Saturday 19 December 1931, Orwell set out to be arrested, in the hope he might be sent to prison and be able to document the experience. He relates that, after four or five pints and the best part of a bottle of whisky, he was picked up and taken to Bethnal Green police station. On arrest, he gave the pseudonym Edward Burton and told police that he worked as a fish porter at Billingsgate Market and had gone on the razzle after a windfall of six shillings.

On Monday, he was taken to Old Street Police Court to be seen by a magistrate. Despite saying he was unable to pay the six-shilling fine, his time in custody was seen as enough to spare him further incarceration.

Study author Dr Luke Seaber said: I felt rather excited when I found the record in the London Metropolitan Archives – everyone dreams of finding something important or overlooked on a dusty shelf. It did seem surprising that no-one had found and written about this record before now, but there’s no reference to it anywhere.,

The court records corroborate much of the detail given in ‘Clink’, including Orwell’s descriptions of the other prisoners with whom he waited in the Old Street Cells before being called in front of the magistrate. For example, the ugly Belgian youth charged with obstructing traffic with a barrow is clearly number 16 from the court record, Pierre Sussman, aged 20, who pleaded guilty to obstructing Shoreditch High Street with a costerbarrow.