bug#3985: 23.1; DEL won't delete backwards in terminal

Since upgrading to 23.1, DEL won't delete backwards anymore; instead
it deletes forwards (everything worked fine in 22.3).  I am running
Emacs on a GNU/Linux box, logged in through ssh from the Mac OS X
Terminal.app.  Pressing the key labelled 'delete' on my keyboard
(where 'backspace' often is located on other keyboards) sends ^? to
Emacs through the terminal emulator, but for some reason, since the
upgrade, it's getting translated to <deletechar>.

C-h DEL gives this:

| <deletechar> (translated from DEL) runs the command delete-char, which
| is an interactive built-in function in `C source code'.
| 
| It is bound to <deletechar>, C-d.

This leaves no way to delete characters backwards.

In GNU Emacs 23.1.1 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu)
 of 2009-07-30

configured using `configure  '--without-x''

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