Thank you, gmaxey! But my code works, no mirage. The only trouble is that it inserts the 'a' after instead of before the space: |1 a| instead of |1a |. The numbering of the footnotes in the document body has been dealt with before with adequate code.
I cannot adopt your code, because it deletes the reference number. My code doesn't, neither in the main document nor in the footnote area.