Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold (July 1, 1885Copy of original birth certificate – disappeared December 12, 1910) was an American socialite and heiress who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in New York City in December 1910.
The daughter of Francis R. Arnold, a fine goods importer, Arnold was born and raised in Manhattan in an affluent family. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College, she returned to her family home at 108 East 79th Street and attempted to begin a career as a writer. On December 12, 1910, Arnold left her home to go shopping for a dress and was seen by a cashier as well as a friend on Fifth Avenue. She told the friend that she had planned to walk through Central Park before returning home. That evening, when Arnold failed to appear for dinner, her family grew suspicious.
Arnold's father initially wanted to avoid publicity 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 City Police Department (NYPD) 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 have never been resolved and Arnold's fate remains unknown.
Timeline Background Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold was born in New York City on July 1, 1885,1900 United States Federal Census the second of four children to Francis Rose Arnold and his wife, Mary Martha Parks Arnold (née Samuels). Arnold had an older brother, John (born December 1884) and two younger siblings: Dan Hinckley (born February 1888) and Marjorie Brewster (born August 1891). Her father was a Harvard University graduate who was a senior partner of F.R. Arnold & Co., a company that imported "fancy goods" such as perfumes. Her paternal aunt, Harriette Maria Arnold, was married to Supreme Court Justice Rufus W. Peckham. Arnold's paternal family were descendants of English passengers who arrived in North America on the Mayflower, while her mother hailed from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Due to their social standing, the family was listed in the Social Register.
Arnold was educated at New York's Veltin School for Girls and attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she majored in literature and language. She graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1905. After her graduation, Arnold continued to live at the family home at 108 East 79th Street and attempted to begin a career as a writer.
In spring 1910, Arnold submitted a short story to McClure's magazine which was rejected. Her friends and family, who were largely amused by her writing aspirations, teased her about the rejection, prompting Arnold to rent a post office box to receive correspondence from magazines and publishing houses. She submitted a second short story to McClure's, "The Poinsettia Flames", in November 1910; that story was also rejected. According to Arnold's friends, the second rejection left her dejected and embarrassed. Two months before she disappeared, Arnold asked her father Francis if she could take an apartment in Greenwich Village in order to write. Francis forbade his daughter to move out of the family home, telling her that, "A good writer can write anywhere." Dorothy Arnold continued to pursue a writing career, but found no success.
Disappearance
On the morning of December 12, 1910, Arnold informed her mother Mary that she intended to go shopping for a dress to wear for her younger sister Marjorie's upcoming debutante party. Mary offered to go with her daughter, but Arnold declined the offer, telling her mother she would call her if she found a suitable dress. She then left the family home at around 11 a.m. According to the Arnold family, she had approximately $25–30 cash in her possession (approximately $ to $ today). She walked from her home on 79th Street to the Park & Tilford store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street.
Arnold charged a half pound box of chocolates to her account at approximately 12:00 p.m., placed it in her muff, and then walked thirty-two blocks (1.9 miles) south to Brentano's bookstore at 27th Street and Fifth Ave. While at Brentano's, Arnold purchased Engaged Girl Sketches, a book of humorous essays by Emily Calvin Blake. 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. She recalled that Arnold told her she was going to walk home through Central Park. King last saw Arnold on 27th Street shortly before 2 p.m. when she turned to wave goodbye for a second time.
There were no published reports of Arnold having shopped for the intended dress.
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. Shortly after midnight on December 13, Elsie Henry, one of Arnold's friends, phoned the family home to see if she had returned. Henry later said Arnold's mother answered the telephone and told her that she had returned home. When Henry asked to speak to Arnold, her mother hesitated and told Henry that Arnold had gone to bed with a headache.
Investigation Fearing that their daughter's disappearance would draw unwanted press attention and could become socially embarrassing, the Arnold family didn't report her disappearance to the police for weeks. It is speculated that the family was influenced by the 1909 disappearance of Adele Boas, a 13-year-old girl who was reported missing from Central Park and later found to have run away to Boston. Adele later returned home. The Boas family, also prominent Upper East Siders, were scandalized and shamed in the newspapers after the incident.
In an attempt to keep the incident out of the papers, the Arnold family quietly contacted John S. Keith, a family friend and lawyer, the morning following Arnold's disappearance. Keith arrived at the family home and searched Arnold's bedroom. He discovered that except for the outfit she was wearing, all of her clothes and other personal belongings were accounted for. He also found personal letters with foreign postmarks and two folders for transatlantic ocean liners on Arnold's desk, as well as burned papers in her fireplace. The burned papers were presumed to be the rejected manuscripts Arnold had submitted to McClure's. Over the following weeks, Keith visited jails, hospitals and morgues in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, but did not find any sign of Arnold. After his search proved fruitless, he suggested that the Arnold family hire Pinkerton detectives to investigate.
Pinkerton investigators searched area hospitals and other places that Arnold was known to frequent but found no trace of her. They also questioned Arnold's friends and former college classmates about her whereabouts, but none had seen her. As Keith had found literature for transatlantic ocean liners in Arnold's room the day after she disappeared, Pinkerton investigators theorized that she might have eloped with a man to Europe. The agents searched marriage records, but none was found bearing Arnold's name. Agents were then dispatched overseas to search ocean liners arriving from New York. While several women matching Arnold's physical description were found, Arnold herself was not.
After Keith and the Pinkerton investigators could not find Arnold, they persuaded her father to contact the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The police advised him to hold a press conference in order to get as much publicity as possible. Arnold's father resisted the suggestion, but eventually agreed. On January 25, 1911, reporters gathered at his New York City office, where he informed them of his daughter's disappearance and offered a $1,000 reward (approximately $ today) for information leading to her whereabouts.
During the press conference, reporters asked Francis Arnold if it were possible that his daughter was still alive and had simply run away with a man, as he did not allow his daughter to date. Francis vehemently denied this stating, "I would have been glad to see her associate more with young men than she did, especially some young men of brains and position: one whose profession or business would keep him occupied. I don't approve of young men who have nothing to do." Reporters soon discovered that Francis' comment was in reference to George Griscom Jr., a man Arnold had met while attending Bryn Mawr and with whom she was romantically involved. Griscom was a 40-year-old engineer who came from a wealthy Pennsylvania family, with whom he still lived at the Kenmawr Hotel in Pittsburgh.
Reporters also discovered that, in September 1910, Arnold had lied to her parents and told them she was going to visit a former Bryn Mawr classmate in Boston. Instead, she spent a week in a hotel with Griscom. Arnold's parents found out about the rendezvous after Arnold pawned $500 worth of jewels to finance their week-long stay. After returning home, Arnold's parents forbade her to continue the relationship with Griscom because they found him unsuitable. Despite their disapproval, Arnold continued to correspond with Griscom. The two saw each other for a final time in early November, shortly before Griscom left on a vacation with his parents.
After Arnold's disappearance, Griscom was found vacationing with his parents in Florence, Italy. The Arnold family sent him a telegram on December 16 asking for information about Dorothy's disappearance. In a return telegram, Griscom denied any knowledge of her whereabouts and claimed to know nothing of her disappearance. In early January 1911, Arnold's mother Mary and her brother John travelled to Italy by ship to forcibly interrogate Griscom. They met him in his room at the Anglo-American Hotel on January 16. Griscom continued to maintain that he knew nothing of the disappearance. Mary and John demanded that Griscom give them the letters that Dorothy had sent him. John later claimed the letters contained nothing of importance and said that he later destroyed them. Upon his return to the United States in February 1911, Griscom told the press that he intended to marry Arnold once she was found and on the condition that her mother approve of the marriage. Mary later told reporters she would never approve of the union.
That same month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that clerks at the Anglo-American Hotel had seen a veiled woman they believed to be Arnold. According to staff, Griscom and the veiled woman had an "earnest talk" they could not hear and that the woman appeared "greatly agitated". In the months following the announcement of Arnold's disappearance, Griscom spent thousands of dollars for ads in major newspapers asking her to come home.