December 12, 1910: Socialist and heiress Dorothy Arnold disappears in New York. She is never found.
Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold was born on July 1, 1885 in Manhattan, and raised on the Upper East Side by a Social Register family of Mayflower descendants. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she wanted to be a writer. During calendar year 1910, she submitted 2 stories to McClure's magazine, but both were rejected.
On December 12, she left her home at around 11:00 AM, telling her mother that she was going shopping for a dress, to wear for her younger sister Marjorie's upcoming debutante party. She had about $25 or $30 in cash in her possession. She walked from the family home at 108 East 79th Street to the Park & Tilford store, at the corner of 59th Street and 5th Avenue.
At Park & Tilford, at around 12:00 Noon, she charged a half pound box of chocolates to her account, but did not buy a dress. She then walked to Brentano's bookstore, at 27th Street & 5th Avenue. There, she bought Engaged Girl Sketches, a book of humorous essays by Emily Calvin Blake. Of course, she did not buy a dress at a bookstore. The clerks who waited on Arnold in both stores later said that she was courteous, and did not exhibit any unusual behavior.
Outside the bookstore, Arnold ran into a female friend named Gladys King. King recalled that the two spoke briefly about Marjorie's upcoming debutante party, and that Arnold seemed to be in good spirits. King then excused herself to meet her mother for lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, at 34th Street & 5th Avenue. (The Waldorf moved to its current location, at 49th Street & Park Avenue, in 1931, and the Empire State Building was built on the site of the original.)
King recalled that Arnold told her she was going to walk home through Central Park. King last saw Arnold on 27th Street, shortly before 2:00 PM, when she turned to wave goodbye for a second time. She had already walked 52 blocks, over two and a half miles. No Subway, bus or trolley for her; but then, no private car and chauffeur were used, either.
By the early evening, Arnold had failed to return home for dinner. As she never missed meals without informing her family, the Arnolds became worried. They began calling her friends to find her whereabouts, but no one had seen her.
Arnold's father initially wanted to avoid publicity, and thus social embarrassment, over his daughter's disappearance, and so sought the help of private investigators in locating her. After these attempts proved fruitless, the family filed a missing persons report with the New York Police Department (NYPD) on January 25, 1911.
Various theories, sightings and rumors regarding Arnold's disappearance circulated in the years and decades after she was last seen. Suicide, from despondency over her early rejection as a writer, seemed unlikely, given the word of those who saw her on December 12. An ex-boyfriend, with whom she had previously run off, was interrogated, but he said he knew nothing about her disappearance, and his involvement was concluded to have been a dead end.
Another theory is that she had gotten pregnant, ran off to get an illegal abortion, had died on the operating table, and that she had been cremated to get rid of the evidence. But while this happened to many women at the time, no one has found evidence tying Arnold to the theory. King and the clerks gave no indication that she exhibited any of the emotion connected to an unwanted pregnancy.
Her fate remains unknown. She should not be confused with actress Dorothy Arnold (1917-1984), who was married to baseball star Joe DiMaggio from 1939 to 1944, and was the mother of his only child, Joe DiMaggio Jr.
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December 12, 1910 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. Professional basketball barely existed. And while professional hockey did, the season was a few days away from starting. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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