Lakes.  In 1802 the inn was visited by
the (so-called) Honourable Colonel Hope,
brother of the Earl of Hopetoun; a handsome
man, with a very winning address.
He proposed to Mary, and was accepted.
Not long after the marriage, he fell into the
meshes of the law, and proved to be a
man named Hatfield, who had committed
forgery, bigamy, and a long list of other
crimes, which brought him to the scaffold.

Real similarity of form and features,
without any attempt at fraud or deception,
is a different thing from the kind of
personation above adverted to.  Shakespeare
made excellent use of it in his ever-fresh
Comedy of Errors.  But concerning remarkable
likenesses, it should always be borne
in mind that two people who seem wonderfully
alike apart, will usually be found, when
they are brought together, to be very little
alike, or very much less so than was honestly
supposed.

Medical men are aware of the co-existence
of persons bearing a marvellous
resemblance one to another; and so are
judges and barristers.  Disputed cases of
the kind are by no means uncommon.
Early in the present century there were
two men, Hoag and Parker, so exactly or
so nearly alike that it was no easy matter
to know which was which.  One of them,
a rogue, benefited by this resemblance.
Being apprehended for some criminal
offence, and placed at the bar, some of
the witnesses swore that the man before
them was Hoag; others swore that he was
Parker; as the benefit of the doubt generally
goes with the accused in such cases, the
man was acquitted.

Very considerable embarrassment
sometimes arises at coroners' inquests, owing
to the difficulty of settling the identity of
the deceased person.  Three cases out of
several, may be selected, to show how honest
persons may be self-deceived.

There was an instance in 1817, in which
the dead body of a woman was found tied
to a boat, drawn up near Greenwich. At
an inquest consequently held, an old man
came forward and swore that the deceased
was his daughter, the wife of an out-pensioner.
He described a fierce quarrel
which had taken place between the
married couple, and in which he had interfered
to avert serious consequences; they
left his house together, and he had not
since seen the woman.  Other persons also
swore that the deceased was the old man's
daughter.  The police were set upon the
track of the husband, who was away;
but they suddenly lighted upon the wife
herself, alive and well! The old man
and his neighbours were all surprised
at this fact; the coroner severely
reprimanded them for the blunder they had
made; but it was admitted that the
personal resemblance between the two women
was considerable, even to the existence of
a mark on one arm.  The deceased body
was not identified; nor was it known
whether the death was by murder or by
suicide.

In 1866, the coroner of Burton-on-Trent
held an inquest on the body of a man
found in the river near the town.  Two
respectable men, who came to view the
body, at once announced it to be that of a
brother of theirs, who had been for a
short time missing from home.  Their
statement was believed, their claim allowed;
and they were permitted to bury the body
in Burton-on-Trent churchyard.  The inquest
was adjourned, in the hope of obtaining
additional evidence as to the cause of
death.  When the jury re-assembled, they
were surprised to see the real brother enter
the room, alive and well.  There seems to
have been no collusion here; the relatives
had been deceived by a great likeness; and
the parish repaid them the cost of the
funeral.  In this, as in the last-mentioned
instance, failure attended all the attempts
made to identify the dead body, or to
ascertain the cause of death.

Perhaps the Hackney Wick case, which
rivetted public attention in 1868, was one
of the most remarkable on record, in
regard to the persistency with which several
persons asserted an identity, under
circumstances which would have necessitated a
particular man being three or four different
men at one time.  There were some half-
finished houses near the Hackney Wick, or
Victoria Park, station, of the North London
Railway.  The builder, having determined
to finish them, went to one of the houses
in April of the above-named year, opened
it, and perceived a very offensive odour in
the passages and kitchen.  A little search
brought to light a dead body in a large
cupboard under the stairs.  The state of
the body denoted that death must have
occurred two or three mouths before.
There was a scar over one eyebrow, such
as might have been occasioned by a fall or
a bruise.  The clothes were good, but a
little blood-stained; and an additional odd
boot was found near the body.  An empty
phial, labelled "laudanum: poison," was
on a shelf in the cupboard, with only just