NY NY - Dorothy Arnold, 25, New York, 1910

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The final photo taken of Dorothy Arnold before her mysterious disappearance


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BEWARE: These 50 Strangest Unsolved Mysteries of All Time Are Seriously Spooky!

26. The Disappearance of Dorothy Arnold

Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold was a wealthy New York socialite. She was the daughter of perfume importer Francis Rose Arnold and his wife Mary Martha Parks Arnold, as far as anyone knew she had a happy home life.

On the morning of December 12, 1910, she left her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and told her mother that she was headed downtown to buy an evening dress. According to The New York Times, when her mother asked if she could accompany her daughter, Dorothy said “No. When I find the gown I want, I will telephone you and you can come down and see it.” When she left the house, she had over $30 in her pocket. In today’s currency, that would be more than $750. On her way down 5th Avenue, she stopped at a grocery store on 59th Street to buy some chocolate then at a bookstore on 27th Street where she bought a copy of Engaged Girl Sketches, the slightly humorous collection of short romantic stories.

Around the time when she bought the book, she ran into a friend from college, Gladys King. The two talked about a party that they had both been invited to, the same party that Dorothy was buying a dress for. Gladys left to meet her mother for lunch and Dorothy was never seen again.

Francis Arnold was reluctant to gain publicity over his daughter’s disappearance, and initially employed the help of private investigators. After those attempts were unsuccessful, the family filed a missing person report with the New York City Police Department in January 1911. Various theories, sightings, and rumors regarding Arnold’s disappearance circulated in the years and decades after she was last seen, but the circumstances surrounding her disappearance have never been resolved and her fate remains unknown.
 
1028DFNY - Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold
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Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold circa 1910
''Missing Since: December 12, 1910
Location Last Seen: New York City, New York County, New York
Physical Description
Date of Birth: 1884 or July 1, 1885
Age: 25 years old
Race: White
Gender: Female
Height: 5' to 5'4"
Weight: 140-160 lbs.
Hair Color: Dark brown worn in a Pompadour.
Eye Color: Gray/blue''

''Clothing: A tailor-made blue serge coat suit, hip-length, cut in at waist, skirt cut straight. A black velvet hat lined in pale Alice blue and decorated with two blue roses, a jabot of white lace. Low black shoes, silk stockings. Tan gloves.
Jewelry: A gold ring ( two gold bands twisted together) and drop earrings of Lapis Lazuli, blue and plainly set.
Additional Personal Items: Imitation tortoise comb in hair, and a fancy barrette, dark brown and deeply carved. One long, very dark blue hatcomb, of Lapis Lazuli, Carried large black fox muff, fur tipped with white points. Carried also black cloth handbag containing between 20-30 dollars, and some personal cards.''
 
I'm not a legal expert, but it sounds like George's mother willed her estate in a trust to him and his father, to be passed on solely to George, Jr once his father died. The father passed in 1920, so it passed to George Jr. When George, Jr died, his mother's will also stipulated any remainder of her estate was to be passed on to his widow, and then from her, to their children. If he didn't have either, then the remainder was to go to her sister.
When George Jr died, it appears he didn't leave a will and had no widow or children, so the sister was bequeathed the remainder of the trust.
The executor of George, Jr. contested the sister getting the remainder of the mother's estate, stating it violated the rule against perpetuity, and it mentions he may have married someone born after his mother's death, voiding the rule. The court sided with the sister.
Maybe they couldn't prove he was married and had a widow or a family?
 
So I went down the rabbit hole of looking at New York Dec. 1910 newspapers available online from the Library of Congress. I looked at Dec. 1- Dec 11th papers. Probably trying to get inside Dorothy's mind and see if anything in those papers may have caught her interest.
As expected, numerous stores were having Christmas gift sales on items- " May we recommend the following for gift-giving" types of ads. Dorothy had about $35.00 with her. Velvet evening gowns were on sale at one store for $6.98, original cost $15.00. Other dresses and gowns were also on sale for $6.98. The outfit Dorothy was wearing when she disappeared was the absolute latest NYC style. Train tickets from NYC to "elsewhere" would have ranged from $1.50 for a basic ticket to $3.00 for a seat with extra leg room. An overnight berth with bed would have been $20-35.00 for a cross country trip.
Sarah Bernhardt was performing onstage and various papers had interviews with her. The play she was performing in attracted quite a bit of attention from the press, not only because Bernhardt was in it, but a male actor was portraying the Biblical Jesus on stage in New York for the first time ever. Hollywood silent movies could not hire scriptwriters fast enough to meet the demand . Many of those early writers were female. Dorothy may have seen an opportunity out West to pursue a writing career as a scriptwriter.
There was a "Cycling Carnival" featured in Madison Square Garden, with at least 3 well-known (male) cyclists participating. In the "Help Wanted" section, there was an ad requesting
someone " fluent in Italian to apply immediately" for a position as a teacher in a private New York school. Most of the other ads were for lady's maids or laundresses. IIRC, wasn't Dorothy fluent in French and Italian?
 
rainwaterstill said:
So I went down the rabbit hole of looking at New York Dec. 1910 newspapers available online from the Library of Congress. I looked at Dec. 1- Dec 11th papers. Probably trying to get inside Dorothy's mind and see if anything in those papers may have caught her interest.
As expected, numerous stores were having Christmas gift sales on items- " May we recommend the following for gift-giving" types of ads. Dorothy had about $35.00 with her. Velvet evening gowns were on sale at one store for $6.98, original cost $15.00. Other dresses and gowns were also on sale for $6.98. The outfit Dorothy was wearing when she disappeared was the absolute latest NYC style. Train tickets from NYC to "elsewhere" would have ranged from $1.50 for a basic ticket to $3.00 for a seat with extra leg room. An overnight berth with bed would have been $20-35.00 for a cross country trip.
Sarah Bernhardt was performing onstage and various papers had interviews with her. The play she was performing in attracted quite a bit of attention from the press, not only because Bernhardt was in it, but a male actor was portraying the Biblical Jesus on stage in New York for the first time ever. Hollywood silent movies could not hire scriptwriters fast enough to meet the demand . Many of those early writers were female. Dorothy may have seen an opportunity out West to pursue a writing career as a scriptwriter.
There was a "Cycling Carnival" featured in Madison Square Garden, with at least 3 well-known (male) cyclists participating. In the "Help Wanted" section, there was an ad requesting
someone " fluent in Italian to apply immediately" for a position as a teacher in a private New York school. Most of the other ads were for lady's maids or laundresses. IIRC, wasn't Dorothy fluent in French and Italian?
Click to expand...

I don't know what languages she was fluent in, if any, but she majored in literature and language at Bryn Mawr college, according to her wiki page. I believe her love interest was in Italy at the time of her disappearance.
 
DEC 1, 2022
www.investigationdiscovery.com

A New York Socialite Vanished Without A Trace In December 1910

Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold was the heir to a perfume fortune when she vanished without a trace on Dec. 12, 1910. Her case is the oldest missing person file listed with The Charley Project, a public database of more than 15,000 missing people.
www.investigationdiscovery.com www.investigationdiscovery.com
[...]

The Only Clues​

The private investigator learned that Dorothy had a secret post office box that she’d opened months before her disappearance. In addition to her life as a socialist, Dorothy was an aspiring writer who was using the box to hide rejected manuscripts from her reportedly critical family members.

The investigator also learned Dorothy was dating a much older man, George C. Griscom Jr., an engineer in Philadelphia, some 100 miles away from New York. While Dorothy had been to see him earlier in 1910 while telling her family she was spending the week with a girlfriend, Griscom was not believed to be a suspect in the disappearance. He was in Italy when Dorothy went missing.

There were a handful of theories about her case. Some believed she’d been murdered and thrown into one of the lakes in Central Park. Others speculated that she’d died of a botched abortion or even planned her disappearance, but there was never any evidence to substantiate any of those claims.

The unsolved case was eventually closed, and all of Dorothy’s loved ones went to their graves without knowing what happened to her. Her case was written about often through the 20th century, and continues to be the subject of podcasts, articles, and speculation in online forums.
 
https://parade.com/1194770/marynliles/unsolved-mysteries/

26. The Disappearance of Dorothy Arnold​

Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold was a wealthy New York socialite, the daughter of perfume importer Francis Rose Arnold and his wife Mary Martha Parks Arnold. As far as anyone knew she had a happy home life.

On the morning of Dec. 12, 1910, she left her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and told her mother that she was headed downtown to buy an evening dress. According to The New York Times, when her mother asked if she could accompany her daughter, Dorothy said “No. When I find the gown I want, I will telephone you and you can come down and see it.” When she left the house, she had over $30 in her pocket. In today’s currency, that would be more than $750. On her way down 5th Avenue, she stopped at a grocery store on 59th Street to buy some chocolate, then at a bookstore on 27th Street where she bought a copy of Engaged Girl Sketches, a humorous collection of short romantic stories.

Around the time when she bought the book, she ran into a friend from college, Gladys King. The two talked about a party that they had both been invited to, the same party that Dorothy was buying a dress for. Gladys left to meet her mother for lunch and Dorothy was never seen again.

Francis Arnold was reluctant to gain publicity over his daughter's disappearance, and initially employed the help of private investigators. After those attempts were unsuccessful, the family filed a missing person report with the New York City Police Department in January 1911. Various theories, sightings, and rumors regarding Arnold's disappearance circulated in the years and decades after she was last seen, but the circumstances surrounding her disappearance have never been resolved and her fate remains unknown.
 
I wish a descendant of one of her siblings would put their DNA out there on family DNA sites to if anything shakes out (if they haven't). I believe she had brothers and sisters.
 
^ I think that could be key here, Alleykins, because I believe Dorothy went off on her own and started a new life, possibly had children, etc.
 
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