Back from the dead

This news story about a mother who mistakenly identified the dead body of a stranger as that of her missing son, only to have the real son turn up alive and well after the funeral, echoes an episode in the life of Ellen Terry.

Bryan Forbes tells us in his entertaining history of the British acting tradition, That Despicable Race, that at one point in the late 1860s the actress disappeared. Separated from her husband G F Watts, she'd got together with the architect Edward Godwin and they were keeping it quiet, not just on account of the social risks but because her allowance from Watts was hers only "so long as she shall live a chaste life".

What she hadn't bargained for was the discovery in the Thames of the corpse of a girl who so much resembled her that Ellen's father identified it as his daughter's.

Fortunately, word of this reached her and she went hurtling back to the family home to find everyone wearing mourning for her. It was, says Forbes, "surely an incident that Dickens would have savoured."

One or two columnists may revive this tale in the Sunday papers, so don't forget, you read it here first.