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IN 1918, a French soldier who had been returned from a German prisoner-of-war camp after the end of World War One was found confused in a train station in the city of Lyon, without papers. He said his name was Anthelme Mangin, but couldn’t remember where he was from and was placed in a psychiatric hospital.
After his photo was circulated, hundreds of families claimed him. But it wasn’t until the 1930s that his true identity was established as ex-waiter Octave Monjoin. The trauma of his war experiences on the Western Front was reckoned to have caused his amnesia.
SUCCESSFUL British conductor and musician Clive Wearing contracted a rare form of the herpes simplex virus in 1985 that caused brain damage.
It left the married 47-yearold with two forms of amnesia, meaning he could remember few details of his past life and was only able to store new memories for seven to 30 seconds before forgetting them again. Amazingly, he was still able play the piano because that part of his brain wasn’t affected. His story was made into a TV documentary called Prisoner Of Consciousness.
IN the film 50 First Dates, actress Drew Barrymore plays a woman who has anterograde amnesia, caused by a brain injury from a car crash. It leaves her unable to make new memories.
A similar real-life case involved Michelle Philpots, from Spalding, Lincs, who had two motor accidents which, by 1994, left her with a condition that means her memory of the previous 24 hours is wiped clean. Husband Ian, who she married in 1997, often had to convince her they were really hitched, showing her photos from their wedding, while Michelle relied on Post-it notes and mobile phone alarms to keep track of her life.
AGATHA Christie, famous for her puzzling crime mysteries, disappeared herself in 1926 for 11 days and caused a sensation.
The writer was eventually found 200 miles from her abandoned car staying in a Harrogate hotel under the name Mrs Teresa Neele.
Her husband Archibald, who had been having an affair with a woman called Neele, said she’d suffered a complete loss of memory, which was confirmed by doctors, though it later returned. It’s thought Christie may have had psychogenic amnesia, a condition caused by a trauma. But some think she staged the episode for publicity.
But during the investigation, he tried to avoid arrest by turning up at a police station with a slash across his chest saying he’d been attacked and had amnesia.
Duffy’s claim was later exposed as fake.
EastEnders star Gemma McCluskie, 29, was murdered by her brother Tony in 2012 in east London after he hit her over the head, dismembered the body and callously dumped it in a canal.
He admitted killing his sister, but said he couldn’t remember doing it.
Jurors didn’t believe him and McCluskie was jailed for life.