Georgia Tann
Beulah George "Georgia" Tann was an American child trafficker and social worker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an unlicensed adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s to 1950. Young children were kidnapped and then sold to wealthy families, abused, or—in some instances—murdered. A state investigation into numerous cases of adoption fraud led to the institution's closure in 1950. Tann died of cancer before the investigation made its findings public.
Early life and education
Tann was born on July 18, 1891, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to Beulah Isabella and George Clark Tann. She was older than her brother, Rob Roy Tann, by three years. Young Beulah was a school teacher during a time when it was uncommon for women to work outside of the home. Her father, Judge George Tann, reportedly had a "domineering" personality. He also had aspirations of his daughter becoming a concert pianist, and, beginning at the age of five, he put her in piano lessons that continued into adulthood. Nelli Kenyon with The Nashville Tennessean reported that Tann's childhood home in Hickory, Mississippi, was a popular neighborhood gathering spot. Judge Tann would sometimes bring abandoned or neglected children with him, remarking that he would need a minister, school teacher, and doctor to figure out what to do with the children.Tann attended Martha Washington College in Abingdon, Virginia, graduating with a degree in music in 1913, and took courses in social work at Columbia University in New York for two summers. However, she despised playing piano and desired to become a lawyer as her father had been. Under his tutelage, she read the law and passed the state bar exam in Mississippi. However, her father did not want her to practice law because it was unusual for women. With no apparent desire to get married or have children, she availed herself of one of the few careers available to unmarried women of her time, social work.
Career
Upon graduation, she briefly worked in Texas as a social worker but quit quickly.Mississippi Children's Home Society
Tann found employment at the Mississippi Children's Home Society as the Receiving Director at the Kate McWillie Powers Receiving Home for Children. Ann Atwood, the daughter of a family friend, also worked at the home as a housemother; Ann was eight years Tann's junior. She had recently given birth to a son out of wedlock and, around this time, appended Hollinsworth to her name, likely to give the impression that she had been widowed. During this time, Tann would also work as a teacher in Itta Bena, Mississippi, going in September to teach through the winter, either accompanied by another teacher, Atwood, or Tann's adopted baby daughter, June Ann. In 1923, Tann and Atwood spent the Christmas holiday with Tann's parents. It is unclear when they became a couple, but when Tann was terminated because of her questionable child-placing methods in 1924, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee with Atwood, Atwood's infant son Jack, and June Ann.Tennessee Children's Home Society
In Memphis, Tann was hired as the Executive Secretary at the Shelby County branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Its offices were located on the fifth floor of the Goodwyn Building downtown. The society was the largest in the state and had branches in Jackson, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. Tann eventually took over the organization, using what author Robert Blade called "aggressive" tactics. In 1924, Tann began trafficking children.Tennessee law permitted agencies to place children with appropriate applicants. However, to ban the selling of children, agencies could charge only for their services. In keeping with the law, the society charged about seven dollars for adoptions within Tennessee. However, Tann also arranged for out-of-state, private adoptions for which she charged a premium. As many as 80 percent of these adoptions were to parents in New York and California. Records indicate that between 1940 and 1950, the agency placed 3,000 children in just those two states.
"at a time when adoptions in Tennessee cost the princely sum of $7, some adoptions brokered by Tann cost as much as $5,000"
Alma Walton and Regina Waggoner worked for Tann and made a trip every three weeks with four to six babies: Walton to California and Waggoner to New York. They would rent hotel rooms to meet with prospective adoptive parents, most of whom were wealthy. Each couple would pay in a check made out to "Georgia Tann." Additionally, Tann might charge prospective parents for background checks she had never pursued, air travel costs at exorbitant rates, and adoption paperwork at five times the actual cost. The state of Tennessee itself was contributing a year to the agency, with 31 percent of that money going towards the Memphis branch.
Profits were kept in a secret bank account under a false corporation name. It is alleged that she pocketed 80 to 90 percent of the fees from these adoptions for her personal use. She also failed to report the income to either the Society's board or the Internal Revenue Service. In a 1979 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Tennessee special prosecutor Robert Taylor reported that 1,200 children were adopted out of the home between 1944 and 1950, but only a few of them remained with Tennessee families.
Notable personalities who used Tann's services included actress Joan Crawford. June Allyson and husband Dick Powell also used the Memphis-based home for adopting a child, as did the adoptive parents of professional wrestler Ric Flair. New York Governor Herbert Lehman, who signed a law sealing birth certificates from New York adoptees in 1935, also adopted a child through the agency.
Tann used a variety of methods to procure children. Through pressure tactics, threats of legal action, and other ways, she would dupe or coerce birth parents, mostly poor single mothers, to turn the children over to her custody, often under false pretenses. Alma Sipple, one of Tann's victims, described her as "a stern-looking woman with close-cropped grey hair, round wireless glasses, and an air of utter authority." Tann also arranged to take children born to inmates at Tennessee mental institutions and those born to wards of the state through her connections. To meet demand, she resorted to kidnappings. In a 1937 governmental report by Emma Annie Winslow, a prominent American home economist and researcher, she reported that the three homes for unwed mothers in Memphis, in cooperation with the local health department, had committed to keeping mothers with their infants for at least three months before seeking adoption, especially to complete breastfeeding. However, all three homes reported that, in practice, the Tennessee Children's Home would collect the children within weeks due to "court commitment." Winslow also reported that Tann had the practice of collecting children directly from their mothers at the hospital before the mother was even released, some mothers having signed the children over to the orphanage before the child was even born. Tann said she preferred to receive the children early "before they developed thrush or some other infection" in the hospital. Winslow also noted that, during 1933–1934, while there were no maternal deaths between the three homes, there was a large number of infant deaths due to an "epidemic" at Memphis General Hospital. The author noted that improvements in care in the hospital nursery had decreased infant mortality during previous years, and ultimately concluded that the uptick in infant deaths must have come from "non-resident" mothers from other areas who gave birth in Memphis.
Tann was documented taking children born to unwed mothers at birth, claiming that the newborns required medical care. When the mothers asked about the children, Tann or her accomplices would explain that the babies had died when they had been placed in foster homes or adopted. In some cases, single parents would drop their children off at nursery schools, only to be told that welfare agents had taken the children. In others, children would be temporarily placed in an orphanage because a family was experiencing illness or unemployment, only to find out later that the orphanage had adopted them out or had no record of the children ever being placed.
Tann destroyed records of the children who were processed through the Society and conducted minimal background checks on the adoptive homes. As a result, the Child Welfare League of America dropped the Society from its list of qualifying institutions in 1941. Many of the files of the children were fictionalized before being presented to the adoptive parents, which covered up the child's circumstances before being placed with the society.
When an adoptive parent discovered that the information on the child was incorrect, such as in cases of falsified medical histories, Tann often threatened the adoptive parents with possible legal action that would force the surrender of their children. Tann's threats were fulfilled with the aid of Shelby County Family Court Judge Camille Kelley, who used her position of authority to sanction Tann's tactics and activities. Tann would identify children as being from homes that could not provide for their care, and Kelley would push the matter through her dockets. Kelley also severed custody of divorced mothers, placing the children with Tann, who then arranged for the adoption of the children into "homes better able to provide for the children's care." However, many of the children were placed into homes where they were used as child labor on farms or with abusive families.
In a 1947 letter, Tann's attorney, Abe Waldauer, said that the prospective adoptive couple had "complete custody and control of a child for one year; may submit the child to any physical or mental examination they wish and take any steps they may desire to ascertain they have a healthy and normal child. If it is not, the Tennessee Children's Home takes it back without question."
Bypassing Shelby County Probate Court, most of the adoption cases were handled in the counties of Dyer, Haywood, and Hardeman. Tann also had connections with former Memphis, Tennessee, mayor E.H. "Boss" Crump, who had an influential political presence until his death. He had long been known to take bribes from unlawful establishments, a fact which Tann used to her advantage. She enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and was widely respected in the community, counting among her friends prominent families, politicians, and legislators.
While in her care, the children were mistreated by Tann, with reports of neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and murder. With no housing facilities, the society held children awaiting placement in public facilities and foster homes. In the 1930s, Memphis had the highest infant mortality rate in the nation, mainly due to Tann. In 1943, a wealthy businessman donated the mansion at 1556 Poplar Avenue to the society. The offices and intake rooms were put on the bottom floor, while the nurseries were upstairs.
The all-female staff wore all-white nursing uniforms even though they were mostly untrained and even substance abusers. The children were frequently sedated, and those who were challenging to place were allowed to die of malnutrition. Tann regularly ignored doctors' recommendations for sick children, denying them care or medicine, which often led to preventable deaths from illnesses such as diarrhea. While some of her victims are known to be buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee, other children were never accounted for. The exact number of deceased children remains unknown, with estimates of about 500 deaths due to mistreatment.