Great to ''see'' you again Marilynilpa!I’ve been off of WS for a while and am excited to see some renewed interest in Dorothy Arnold. This is one of my top five historical mysteries!
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Great to ''see'' you again Marilynilpa!I’ve been off of WS for a while and am excited to see some renewed interest in Dorothy Arnold. This is one of my top five historical mysteries!
Great to ''see'' you again Marilynilpa!
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?