A couple of years back the Preston (Md.) Historical Society put a photo of an old newspaper article up on social media. The story was from the Preston News & Farmer in 1939.
Headline: “Sleep Walking Child … Falls from Second Floor About 3 A.M.”
The gist of the story:
“Little Doris Todd, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Todd, fell from the second-floor window of her home on West Main Street [in Preston] Thursday night while walking in her sleep. Mrs. Todd, awakened by strange sounds below her bedroom window, made a hasty examination [and] finding the child’s … bed unoccupied, rushed to the yard where she found the child unconscious. Removed to the house, [the child] regained consciousness. Dr. Plummer’s examination revealed a broken collarbone and shock. It is not known how long the child had lain on the ground before she was discovered.”
If you are like me, your mind has already found its way to this question: What ever became of that sleepwalking girl? And away we go …
• Doris Todd graduated from Preston High School in 1946. By that time, she had grown into a gorgeous young woman. She set out to become a model, attending schools in New York and Miami.
• She had some success. Nine years after her drowsy plunge from the window, Doris was chosen as the “1947 National Swim for Health Week Girl.” While in New York for ceremonies opening the annual fitness campaign, she posed in a bathing suit on the terrace outside her hotel room in a photo circulated widely by wire services. I found it in a Hagerstown newspaper.
• In 1948, the Baltimore Sun ran an unforgettable photo of Doris. She is wearing a bikini made of muskrat skin, which she was set to model that week in a fashion show at the famous National Outdoor Show in Cambridge, Md.. This is where the World Championship of Muskrat Skinning is decided every year. Yes, the event is still going. Quote from that Sun article:
“The Eastern Shore is proud of its muskrat skin production and plans to make certain the industry won’t go unnoticed.”
Doris Todd did her part!
A photo that hangs on the wall in the home of Doris Todd’s daughter, Lisa Scottland-Corkery.
• Later that same year, she returned to her hometown of Preston from her new residence in New York City to attend a family dinner with her siblings and their spouses and children. Reporting on that visit, the Denton Journal described Doris as a “Powers Model.”
• That phrase makes her story even more interesting. In the 1920s John Robert Powers founded in New York City what is believed to be the first modeling agency in the world. “Powers Girls” were national celebrities. In 1943 Hollywood made a musical called “The Powers Girl” that featured music by Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee. In the words of a Life magazine article from those days,
“Powers … is to modeling what Cartier is to diamonds.”
• Doris Todd does not seem to have been one of the “Powers Girls” who modeled their way to fame and celebrity in the manner of Ava Gardner and Lucille Ball. It looks more like–hey, she did just fine for herself, getting gigs at that trade-association and national-fitness-week level.
• Doris was still at it in the 1950s. She is described as a New York City model in an Easton Star-Democrat report from 1950 noting that she had spent time with friends in California and traveled to Honolulu in the then-territory of Hawaii.
• The Denton Journal reported that the Hawaii excursion was a work trip. Doris spent it modeling the latest from Henry Rosenfeld Clothes. This was a fitting assignment for a gal who hailed from little ol’ Preston. Rosenfeld’s rise through the fashion ranks began as a shipping clerk in New York’s garment district. He eventually won fame in the ladies-fashion game by focusing on creating dresses that looked elegant while still being affordable to everyday women from middle- and working-class families.
• In 1951 Doris Todd became Doris Scottland. Her husband’s name was John Edward Scottland.
• The trail of old newspaper clippings ran cold for me at this point. I wasn’t able to find snippets from the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Scottland. I don’t know where Mr. Scottland was from or what he did for work. I don’t know how long Doris kept modeling.
• The couple apparently lived in Virginia for a while. They moved to Florida in the mid-1970s. They had three children–Lisa, Tina, and Todd.
• Doris endured an agonizing stretch in the late 1970s. Her husband died in 1977. Two brothers died soon after that, one in 1978 and one in 1979.
Photo of Doris Todd that appeared in the Baltimore Sun
• Doris died in 1985, just 55 years old. At the time of her death, she lived in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The one-paragraph obituary for her in the Orlando Sentinel describes her only very briefly as “a nurse’s aide and a Presbyterian.”
• The Easton Star-Democrat back home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland did a better job, mentioning Preston High School, the modeling career, and that trip to Honolulu back at the height of Doris Todd’s glory days.
• I put a photo of Doris up on social media a couple of years back, and I’m happy to report that the post found its way to all three of Doris’s children. Here is was Todd Scottland had to say:
“I feel proud to be descended from Doris Todd. Such an independent young woman! As a mother she was not strict but sweet and loving in her ways of teaching us. I also emulated her as I left to homestead in Costa Rica at 22 years. Now I’m 68 and still here in Costa Rica and living a lovely lifestyle.”
• Here is what Lisa Scottland-Corkery had to say:
“Thank you so much for sharing. I have had this photo hanging in my bedroom forever. I will print this and put it in her scrapbook [amid all of the other] photos and newspaper and magazine articles.”
Lisa also added one sweet detail to the story that got the ball rolling here, of the night that little Doris fell from that second floor window.
“She told us that story about her falling out of the window. They had a big white Great Pyrenees-type dog, and that dog laid on top of her [while she was laying outside on the ground] to keep her warm.”
It’s great to hear that Doris Todd is so fondly remembered as an independent, hard-working, loving woman, isn’t it? Cheers to that hard-working Preston girl in the muskrat bikini!
–written and posted by Jim Duffy for Secrets of the Eastern Shore/Whimbrel Creations LLC in February 2023. All rights reserved. Thank you for spending a little time on this site!
