A TEDDY bear that belonged to a little girl orphaned by a tsunami disaster nearly 100 years ago was sold at an auction in the region yesterday for £1,500.

The kilt-wearing teddy was given to a seven-month-old baby girl who was found in the ruins of Reggio Calabria in southern Italy in 1908.

It is thought that Russian sailors rescued the baby in the wake of the massive tsunami, which killed 200,000, and the orphan was named Fyodorovna after the Russian tsarina.

The little girl was then adopted from an Italian nunnery by a Scottish doctor and his wife. The doctor gave her the teddy, which Fyodorovna treasured until her death ten years ago.

Fyodorovna, who tried all her life but failed to find out something of her birth parents, was brought up in Sway, in the Hampshire New Forest.

Her daughter, who wished to remain anonymous, placed the teddy for sale just days before the Boxing Day tsunami in Asia. She travelled to the auction yesterday but was in tears and too upset to talk about her mother and the teddy.

The story of the little bear, made in 1910, has travelled around the world.

It was bought at an auction at the world's biggest toy auctioneers Vectis, based at Thornaby, near Stockton.

The buyer was Alison Wiseman, 40, who owns a teddy bear shop called the Edinburgh Bear Company, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. The mother of seven-year-old Jack, Ms Wiseman travelled to Thornaby from Edinburgh this week for the auction.

She said: "I wanted to bring him back to his native Scotland. We are going to have him on display in the shop as our mascot.

"I read about the story in collectors' magazines and I thought it was just so touching. I thought 'I don't really want to go beyond £1,500', and the teddy would probably be worth less than £100 without the story.

"But if someone had bid an extra £100 I can't honestly say whether I wouldn't have bid even more."

The teddy was originally dressed as a soldier, in khaki, but the tartan was probably chosen in deference to Fyodorovna's father.

Also sold at the auction yesterday was a rare gollywog, made in Germany between 1908 and 1917, which went for £4,600.

Gollywog characters first appeared in a children's storybook in 1895 and the doll is thought to be one of the earliest made.