Socialite Dorothy Arnold had everything going for her, or so
it would seem.
In 1910, the wealthy young woman went shopping on Fifth
Avenue in New York City, ostensibly to buy a new dress for her younger sister’s
debut ball. She was never seen again.
Dorothy was the daughter of perfume importer Francis Arnold,
and she was the niece of Supreme Court Justice Rufus Wheeler Peckham. Her
family moved in the highest circles of society. She had a monthly allowance of
$100, which was quite a lot in 1910--about $2,500 in today's money. The day
before, she had withdrawn $36 from
her account and met some girlfriends for lunch.
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| Photo of Dorothy Arnold widely circulated after she disappeared | . |
Dorothy walked a lot, and the day she disappeared was no
exception. From her parents’ home on East 79th Street in Manhattan, she walked
about twenty blocks to a candy shop, where she bought a small box of chocolates
and took it with her. Then she walked another distance down Fifth Avenue and
stopped at a bookstore, Brentano’s, where she was known as a frequent customer.
She purchased a book and left.
Just outside the bookshop, she ran into a friend, Gladys
King. Gladys had been invited to Dorothy’s sister’s debut, and she was carrying
her response card for the event and gave it to Dorothy, joking about the
postage she had saved by running into her. They chatted for a few minutes, and
Gladys said she was late for a luncheon engagement.
At this point, Dorothy left her and crossed the street.
Gladys later said she’d told her that she intended to walk home through Central Park.
Gladys set off on her way. At the corner, she looked back and waved. No one
ever admitted seeing Dorothy alive again.
When she failed to return home by dinnertime that evening,
Dorothy’s parents and siblings were alarmed. They made some discreet telephone
calls to friends, but no one could tell them where their daughter was. Being
upper-crust social denizens, they didn’t want any publicity. They were worried,
but they weren’t ready to involve the police.
Instead, they asked the family lawyer to make some
inquiries. When he turned up nothing substantial, they hired a succession of
private detectives. Eventually they even hired Pinkerton detectives and
plastered the city with notices bearing a picture of Dorothy, but that wasn’t
for six weeks.
Odd, you say, to wait six weeks? A lot of people thought
that. When the news broke in January
1911, the media had a feeding frenzy. Sensational headlines appeared across the
country. Mr. Arnold offered a $1,000 reward for information that led to finding
her. The police followed up on hundreds of supposed sightings of Dorothy--she
was kept drugged in Mexico; she was basking on the beach in Hawaii; she was
hiding out in disguise. Dorothy seemed to be everywhere, and yet she was
nowhere.
Due to space constraints I can’t go into all the details of
the case, but I’ll share with you a few of the
theories on what happened to
Dorothy Arnold.
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| Dorothy Arnold--public domain photo |
1. She was found to have a boyfriend, George Griscom, Jr.
Her parents were very strict with Dorothy, even though she was 24. She managed
several trysts with George, and had even spent a week with him in Boston a
couple of months earlier, while her parents thought she was visiting a
girlfriend. Could she have run off with George? George was still in New York
and living with his parents, but once Dorothy’s disappearance made the news, he
went to Italy with his folks. Dorothy’s mother and brother traveled to Italy in
hopes of finding her there with him, but to no avail. All they got was a packet
of love letters from Dorothy, which George handed over to them amid insistence
that he knew nothing of her whereabouts.
2. Could she have disappeared intentionally, to start a new
life on her own? There’s some basis for this idea. Dorothy was an aspiring
writer. She had recently written and submitted two stories to McClure’s Magazine,
but they had been rejected. Her father later said he burned her manuscripts.
She had mentioned to her father that she would like to move to Greenwich
Village and take an apartment there and pursue her writing. Her father forbade
it. Was Dorothy determined to get out from under Dad’s thumb and live the
Bohemian life?
3. Could she have been kidnapped and/or murdered as she
walked through Central Park? Possibly. But no ransom demands were ever
received. Among the false leads police received were tales of murdered women.
When these were followed up, they were found to be hoaxes or concerned other
victims, not Dorothy.
4. Could she have committed suicide? This was a popular
theory. Although Dorothy appeared cheerful and upbeat to those with whom she
spoke that day, including Gladys King, she was known to have been rejected by
the magazine, thwarted by her father, and teased about her writing by her
family. Her father also made it clear he had “no use” for men like George
Griscom, Jr. George was more than a decade older than Dorothy, considered a
playboy who lived with his parents and did not work. Francis Arnold didn’t want
him courting his daughter. Was all of this enough to put Dorothy in despair? If
so, why did nobody say she seemed depressed?
5. Could she have died as the result of surgery? Some
speculated that Dorothy had undergone a back-alley abortion and died as a
result. Six years after she vanished, a Rhode Island convict claimed he’d been
paid $150 back in December 1910 to dig a grave for a wealthy young woman who
had died after a “secret operation.” He said a wealthy young man had paid him.
Police searched for the grave but never found Dorothy’s remains. Most people
concluded the burial story was another hoax.
One thing that has always left people wondering was a
sentence Dorothy penned in a note to herself which said something along the
lines of “Mother would always think it was an accident.” Was this a
foreshadowing of suicide? Of disappearing from her unhappy home life? Or did it
refer to something more innocuous, such as the possibility of being published
in an upscale magazine? The mystery of Dorothy Arnold’s disappearance remains
unsolved. Much more about this case can easily be found online.
My novel The Priority Unit involves the disappearance of a
man. To enter a drawing to win this book, comment below and be sure to leave
your contact information. Since this is Book 1 in a series, if you’ve already
read The Priority Unit, you can choose any later book in the series if you
wish.
Susan Page Davis is the author of more than seventy novels
and novellas. She’s a two-time winner of the Inspirational Readers’ Choice
Award, and also a winner of the Carol Award and two Will Rogers Medallions, and
a finalist in the WILLA Awards and the More Than Magic Contest. A Maine native,
she lived for a while in Oregon and now lives in Kentucky. Visit her website
at: www.susanpagedavis.com , where you can sign up for her occasional
newsletter and read a short story on her romance page. 