Christina Crawford

Christina Crawford (born June 11, 1939) is an American writer and actress, best known as the author of Mommie Dearest, an autobiographical account of alleged child abuse by her adoptive mother, actress Joan Crawford. She is also known for small roles in various television and film projects, such as Joan Borman Kane in the soap opera The Secret Storm and Monica George in the Elvis Presley film Wild in the Country.

Early life and education

Crawford was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1939 to unmarried teen parents.
According to Christina Crawford's personal interview with Larry King, her father was married to another woman, and supposedly in the Navy, while her mother was unmarried. Christina Crawford was adopted from a baby broker in the state of Nevada because Joan Crawford was formerly denied an adoption by social services for being an unfit candidate in California in 1940. Christina Crawford maintains that Joan Crawford did not have a positive relationship with her own mother or with her brother, which contributed to social services' conclusion, as well as her multiple divorces. Subsequent documentation showed that the adoption was handled by Georgia Tann through Tann's infamous Tennessee Children's Home Society. Christina was one of five children adopted by Joan Crawford.^[1] Her siblings are Christopher, adopted in 1943, and twin girls, Catherine (Cathy) and Cynthia (Cindy), adopted in 1947. Another boy, also named Christopher, was adopted in 1942 but he was reclaimed by his birth mother.^[2]
Christina Crawford has stated that her childhood was affected by her adopted mother's alcoholism and violent menstrual mood swings. At the age of ten she was sent to Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, California, where many other celebrity children were in attendance. However, her mother removed her from Chadwick because of alleged "misbehavior" with several of the male students. Joan Crawford then placed her in a Catholic boarding school, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in La Cañada (now the city of La Cañada Flintridge), California, and curtailed Christina's outside contact until her graduation. After graduating from Flintridge, Crawford moved from California to Pittsburgh to attend Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and then to New York City where she studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan. After seven years, she gained a bachelor of arts from UCLA.

Personal life

Christina met Harvey Medlinsky, a Broadway stage manager, while attending acting school. They were married briefly.^[1] She met her second husband, film producer David Koontz, while she worked in public relations for Getty Oil.^[1]

Acting career

Crawford appeared in summer stock theatre, including a production of Splendor in the Grass. She also acted in a number of Off-Broadway productions, including In Color on Sundays (1958).^[3] She also appeared in At Chrismastime (1959) and Dark of the Moon (1959) at the Fred Miller Theater in Milwaukee,^[4] and The Moon Is Blue (1960).^[5]
In 1960, Crawford accepted a role in the film Force of Impulse,^[6] which was released in 1961. Also in 1961, Crawford appeared in a small role in Wild in the Country, a film starring Elvis Presley. That year, she made a guest appearance on Dean Miller's NBC celebrity interview program Here's Hollywood,^[7] promoting the films. In 1962, she appeared in the play The Complaisant Lover. She played five character parts in Ben Hecht's controversial play Winkelberg; that same year, she appeared on the CBS courtroom drama The Verdict is Yours.^[8] In October 1965 she appeared in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, with Myrna Loy, a friend of her mother. She also had a role in Faces, a 1968 film directed by John Cassavetes and starring John Marley and Gena Rowlands.
Christina played "Joan Borman Kane" on the soap opera The Secret Storm in New York from 1968 until 1969. When she went on sick leave in October 1968, Joan Crawford, then over 60 years old, asked for the role of the 24-year-old character. She did this without mentioning it to her daughter, and under the guise of "holding the role" for Christina, so that the part wouldn't be recast during her absence, appearing in four episodes. Viewers increased 40% during this replacement time, and Christina, already feeling betrayed, also felt embarrassed due to her mother's seemingly intoxicated performance.^[9] Eventually let go from the series, Christina believed her mother's interference had contributed to her departure. The producers, however, claimed that the character and her storyline had simply run its course.
Crawford would also appear on other TV programmes, including Medical Center, Marcus Welby, M.D., Matt Lincoln, Ironside and The Sixth Sense.^[10]

Career after mother's death

After Joan Crawford died in 1977, Christina and her brother Christopher discovered that their mother had disinherited them from her $2 million estate, her will citing "reasons which are well-known to them".^[11] In November 1977 Christina and her brother sued to invalidate their mother's will, which she signed on October 18, 1976. Cathy LaLonde (another Crawford daughter) and her husband, Jerome, the complaint charged, "took deliberate advantage of decedent's seclusion and weakened and distorted mental and physical condition to insinuate themselves" into Miss Crawford's favor.^[12] A court settlement was reached on July 13, 1979, awarding Christina and Christopher $55,000 from their mother's estate.^[13]
In 1978, Crawford's book Mommie Dearest was released. It accused her mother of being a cruel, violent, neglectful, and manipulative narcissistic parent, as she adopted her children for publicity instead of out of a desire to be a responsible, humane mother. It also raised public discourse about child abuse, which was just beginning to be widely acknowledged as a problem.^[1] In 1981, a movie version of the same title was released, starring Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford and Diana Scarwid as Christina. The film, while critically panned, went on to gross more than $39 million worldwide from a $5 million budget, and garnered five Golden Raspberry Awards. The film is now regarded as an unintentional comedy and a cult classic. Christina has published subsequent books, including Survivor. For seven years she served as a member of Los Angeles' Inter-Agency Council on Abuse and Neglect Associates, during which time she campaigned for the reform of laws regarding child abuse and child trafficking.^[1]
After a near-fatal stroke in 1981, Crawford spent five years in rehabilitation before moving to the Northwest.^[1] She ran a bed and breakfast called "Seven Springs Farms" in Tensed, Idaho, between 1994 and 1999.^[1] She formed Seven Springs Press in 1998 to publish the 20th-anniversary edition of Mommie Dearest in paperback from the original manuscript. This included material omitted from the first printing about the years following her graduation from high school.
In 1999 Crawford began working as a director of marketing at the Coeur d'Alene Casino in Idaho. On November 22, 2009, she was appointed county commissioner in Benewah County, Idaho, by Governor Butch Otter,^[14] though she lost her bid for election in November 2010.^[15] In 2011, Crawford founded the non-profit Benewah Human Rights Coalition and served as the organization's first president.^[16] In 2013, she made a documentary titled Surviving Mommie Dearest.

Books

• Mommie Dearest (1978) ISBN 0-9663369-0-9
• Black Widow: A Novel (1981) ISBN 0-425-05625-2
• Survivor (1988) ISBN 0-515-10299-7
• No Safe Place: The Legacy of Family Violence (1994) ISBN 0-88268-184-2
• Daughters Of The Inquisition: Medieval Madness: Origin and Aftermath (2003) ISBN 0-9663369-1-7

External links

• Christina Crawford at the Internet Movie Database

Source: wikipedia.com

The Tennessee Children's Home Society Lot At Elmwood

Within Elmwood’s extensive archives T-#504 is short for Turley Lot Number 504.  Of all the lots in Elmwood this is the only one that is forever imprinted on my mind. The mention of T-#504 brings to mind anger, disbelief, shock, curiosity, and especially sadness of the most profound degree.

The Lot Book says that this area is “Reserved for the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.   For those of you not familiar with the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, this was the agency run by Memphis’s infamous Georgia Tann, also known as the “Baby Thief”.

Visit T-#504 and you will see nothing but a grassy patch of ground.  No markers.  Yet within this plot are buried 19 children who died under the supervision of Miss Tann.



The first burial was on September 17th, 1923 and this little girl’s name as registered in the Elmwood records was Maud.  The last burial, Robert, was on October 10, 1949, less than a year before the agency was formally exposed for what it was and shut down.   Eight other children also have full names listed.  It is known, however, that Ms. Tann commonly changed the names of the children so it will never be known if these are the actual birth names.  Ten of the children are only listed as Baby Estelle, Baby Billy, Baby Herbert, and so on. 

Thousands of children went through this agency and were often deceptively stolen from their legitimate parent/s and sold at a profit through Tann’s nefarious ‘adoption system’.  Hundreds of children died while under her care from neglect, abuse, and improper medical care. No one knows for sure what happened to their bodies.  One story, as told in Barbara Raymond’s book The Baby Thief,  has it that some of the bodies were disposed of through an agreement  Miss Tann had with a local mortuary to cremate the remains. It was said that she liked cremation because ‘graves left a trail’. 
T-#504 is one small, sad, visible reminder of that ‘trail’.  The children buried there still wait for a marker to tell the world who they were and what happened to them.

Source: elmwoodcemetery.org

The Hollywood Baby Snatcher:

George Beulah Tann (Georgia)

The sinister story of the woman who stole children and sold them to the stars

The baby snatcher: Georgia Tann stole children from their real families and sold them for her own profit

As she watched her baby coughing in her cot in a corner of her tiny apartment, Alma Sipple felt increasingly desperate.

A single mother in Tennessee, she could not afford medical care for ten-month-old Irma. Suddenly, a knock on the door heralded a turn in her fate: there stood a woman with close-cropped grey hair, round wireless glasses and a stern air.

She exuded authority as she explained she was the director of a local orphanage and had come to help. Alma rushed to show the lady her sickly child.

Examining the baby, the woman offered to pass her off as her own at the local hospital in order to obtain free treatment. She warned Alma not to accompany her, explaining: 'If the nurses know you're the mother, they'll charge you.'

Lifting the child from the cot, the woman turned on her heel and disappeared. Two days later, Alma was told her baby had died.

In fact, Irma had been flown to an adoptive home in Ohio. Alma would not see her daughter again for 45 years.

For far from being her saviour, the woman who had taken Irma was a baby thief.

For 30 years, Georgia Tann made millions selling children. A network of scouts, corrupt judges and politicians helped her steal babies. She also targeted youngsters on their way home from school, promising them ice cream to tempt them away from their homes.

Legal papers would be signed saying they were abandoned - most would never see their families again.
Now, her story has been revealed in a new book. After painstakingly contacting her surviving victims and a forensic search through the archives, Barbara Bisantz Raymond calculates that Tann sold more than 5,000 children - and killed scores through neglect.

During the time she ran her 'business', the infant mortality rate in Memphis was the highest in the country.

Tann molested some of the girls in her care and placed children with paedophiles.

She charged fees to couples desperate to be parents

Some victims were sold as underage farm hands or domestic skivvies. Others were starved, beaten and raped. The lucky ones were sold to wealthy parents, with Hollywood stars, including Lana Turner and Joan Crawford - who adopted twins Cathy and Cynthia - lining up for babies.

Some of the children were featured in magazine articles. A number were placed with families in Britain.
So, who was Georgia Tann and how did she come to ruin so many lives?

Born in Hickory, Mississippi, in 1891, her father, George, was a high court judge and her mother, Beulah, a Southern belle. Inside their lavish house, all was not well.

Sold: Joan Crawford with her adopted daughters Cathy and Cynthia. Many other victims of Georgia were not so lucky

Tann's father was an arrogant, domineering womaniser. From an early age, it became clear Georgia was a disappointment to her strait-laced parents.

Big-boned and broad-shouldered, she wore flannel shirts and trousers: unacceptable clothing for a woman at the time. A car accident had left her with a limp.

Social work was one of the few acceptable careers for women of Tann's class, and despite having no empathy with the vulnerable, she saw it as an escape route from her staid home.

She developed her own theories on society. In eugenic language which would be echoed to infamous effect in Nazi Germany, she described wealthy people as 'of the higher type'.

She considered the poverty stricken young women left in poverty by the Depression as 'breeders', privately referring to them as 'cows'. She argued that poor people were incapable of proper parenting.
After getting a job at the Mississippi Children's Home-Finding Society, she began to translate her beliefs into action.

At the time, adoption was uncommon in the USA. Tann would change that.

At first, she simply placed orphans for adoption. But soon, she realised she could make money by charging hefty fees to couples desperate to become parents.

Mothers were falsely told their newborn had died

By 1920, exploiting the lack of regulations on adoption and her father's position as a judge, Tann began placing children she had kidnapped from poor women.

One of the first mothers she targeted was Rose Harvey. One spring morning in 1922, Tann drove her Ford Model T to a cabin in Jasper County, Mississippi.

Asleep inside was pregnant Rose, who was young, poor, widowed and suffering from diabetes. Her two-year-old son, Onyx, was playing on the back porch.

Tann lured the sturdy, black-haired, brown-eyed boy into her car. Her father signed legal papers declaring Rose to be an unfit mother and Onyx an abandoned child. He was placed with an adoptive family. Rose engaged a lawyer, but was unable to regain custody.

In 1924, Tann started work at the Tennessee Children's Home Society, where she turned part-time baby snatching into big business.

'I can still hear her steps down the hallway. She had big feet and wore black lace-up shoes,' says a former resident at the children's home.

'She always went upstairs to see the babies. There would be masses of them one day. They'd be gone the next.'

Wealthy parent: Lana Turner, pictured in the film Another Time, Another Place, was another Hollywood actress to adopt a child through Georgia

Tann acquired the protection of Memphis's corrupt and all powerful mayor, Edward Hull Crump, and eventually set up her own orphanage, at 1556 Poplar Avenue.

By then, she had met her lesbian partner, Ann Atwood Hollinsworth, who helped Tann ferry babies around the country - as far from their natural parents as possible.

Tann adopted a daughter, June, in 1922. June's daughter, Vicci, says: 'Mother said Georgia Tann was a cold fish; she gave her material things, but nothing else. I don't know why she bothered to adopt her.'

By the Thirties, Tann was charging wealthy couples up to £100,000 in today's money for babies. So, how did she arrange a steady flow of children she could sell?

In some cases, single parents would drop off their children at nursery - when they came back to collect them, they would be told they had been taken away by welfare officers.

Tann offered accommodation to children whose parents were in trouble and targeted the most beautiful infants she could find, dressing them in lace outfits to meet prospective clients.

Older children would be instructed to 'sit on that man's lap and call him daddy'.

Newborns were most in demand. Tann bribed maternity hospital nurses, who falsely told mothers their babies had died.

Irene Green remembers being told her baby was stillborn. 'But I heard him cry!' she protested. She asked to see the body, but was told it had been 'disposed of'. In fact, Georgia's workers had snatched the child.

Tann would falsify birth certificates

Mary Reed was a typical victim. In 1943, aged 18, she gave birth to a baby boy. She was barely conscious when she was presented with a 'routine paper' to sign by a woman dressed in white.
By the time Mary came round and asked for her baby, the child was in New Jersey.

She hired a lawyer but never got her child back. Tann would alter the children's records and falsify birth certificates to make them more appealing to prospective adopters.

Their mother would be described as 'the daughter of a doctor' who had fallen pregnant accidentally, while the father would be 'a medical student'.

She knocked years off the children's age, so they appeared precocious - and to stop them being traced.
Some youngsters were accused of disappointing their adoptive families. Joy Barner was told as a teenager by her father: 'I paid 500 dollars for you - I could have gotten a good hunting dog for a lot less. You come from the lowest scum on earth.'

She later found out she had been stolen in 1925 from a loving family living on a houseboat.

Many of the children were abused. Jim Lambert and his three siblings were taken from their mother by Tann in 1932.

 

Adoption remains popular in Hollywood: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have adopted three children but thankfully evil Georgia is no longer around to organise the placements

The Chicago couple he was placed with divorced and Jim's stepmother hung him up from a hook in the basement.

He and his siblings eventually traced their birth mother, only to find she had died. In her Bible, beside the names of her stolen family she had written: 'The children of a brokenhearted mother. I have no one to love me now.'

He later said: 'I feel angry, frustrated, as if I was cheated out of a whole lot of life.'

Billy Hale recalled being driven away from his mother, crying, in a limousine, with two women in black.

His loving adoptive parents repeatedly reassured him no such event had occurred.

Through his childhood, he suffered from seemingly motiveless rages. It was only many years later, when he researched his background, that he realised his memory was correct.

He tracked down his mother, Mollie, only to be told by her brother she had died of cancer eight years previously, calling out for her son at the end.

He was told: 'She looked for you all her life, Bill.'

'She was a relentless, cold-blooded demon'

By 1935, Tann had placed children in every U.S. state. A social worker who knew her says: 'She placed with no regard to whether children would be happy in their adoptive homes. She wanted to get her hands on every child she could.'

Among the most disturbing cases are the adoptions by single men of young teenagers - Bisantz Raymond suspects they were paedophiles.

Keen to make more money, Tann began running 'Georgia's Christmas Baby Ads' in the local newspaper under the headline: 'Want a real, live Christmas present?'

A brilliant publicist, she gave lectures on adoption, arguing that adopted children 'turn out better' than birth children, saying: 'Ours is a selective process. We select the child and we select the home.'
She was lauded in the national Press as 'the foremost leading light in adoption laws'.

Eleanor Roosevelt sought her counsel regarding child welfare, and President Truman invited her to his inauguration.

But by 1940, alerted by the rising infant mortality rate in the city, some people were on to Tann.

'She was a relentless, cold-blooded demon,' says a paediatrician who tried to curb her. 'She got bigger and bigger the more power she had. She was pompous and self-important, riding around in a Cadillac driven by a uniformed chauffeur. She terrorised everyone.'

By 1950, officials began a long-overdue investigation into Tann's business. State investigator Robert Taylor reported the horror of what had taken place at Tann's orphanage, saying: 'Her babies died like flies.'

Infants were kept in appalling conditions in suffocating heat. Some were sedated until they could be sold. Many were ill. Some were sexually abused - Tann preyed on young girls and a male caretaker would take little boys into the woods.

A news reporter believed he saw a body being buried in the garden.

In 1945, a bout of dysentery caused the deaths of between 40 and 50 children in less than four months.

The damage suffered at Tann's hands could never be undone

The net was closing, but Tann would evade justice. Three days before her death due to cancer, the governor of Tennessee revealed at a press conference that Tann was not the 'angel of adoption' she claimed to be.

He did not mention the grieving parents or dead babies, but focused on the illegal profits she had made while receiving state funding.

Conveniently for the corrupt politicians who had collaborated in her black market baby trade, Tann was too sick to be questioned about her crimes. She died in her four-poster bed at 4.20am on September 15, 1950.

What became of her victims? Many never saw their families again - after Tann's crimes came to light, there was no attempt to return children to their rightful homes.

They were granted rights to their birth certificates and adoption records only in 1995, after a long battle. A small number were reunited with their birth mothers, but the damage they had suffered at Tann's hands could never be undone.

Forty-five years after Tann had walked into her apartment, Alma Sipple finally found Irma, but they were unable to form a lasting relationship.

'Only someone who has lost a child this way can know how horrible it is,' says Alma. 'There's a hole in my heart that will never be filled.'

• The Baby Thief by Barbara Bisantz Raymond (Metro, £18.99). To order a copy at £17.10 (P&P free), tel: 0845 155 0720
•  
• By Zoe Brennan for the Daily Mail
  Updated: 06:10 EST, 29 January 2009 

Source: dailymail.co

Judge Camille Kelley

Camille Kelley. This portrait that hangs in the Shelby County Juvenile Court building in Memphis, TN.

Camille McGee Kelley (1879–January 28, 1955) was an American juvenile court judge and author. She was investigated by the state of Tennessee for using her judgeship to aid Georgia Tann's ongoing adoption fraud operation conducted under the auspices of the Tennessee Children's Home Society and resigned shortly after this information became public.

History

Camille Kelley was the juvenile court judge in Shelby County, Tennessee from 1920 to 1950. Known as the "Little Irish Judge," she never wore a judicial robe in court, opting instead for colorful dresses, jewels and always a flower pinned to her shoulder. She was quoted as saying, "Robes would scare the children to death. They're not so timid when they appear before me and see that I am wearing a flower".



Kelley's formula in dealing with delinquents was simple: "We try the boy, not his offense. We seek to take away from him nothing but his mistakes." She was often quoted as saying that juvenile justice should be tempered with a sympathetic understanding of human problems. Shortly after she retired, she said favorable results were obtained in 85-90% of the 50,000 cases that she had handled.
Kelley authored three books inspired by her experiences at juvenile court.

Scandal

Hallmark Productions was producing a movie based on her book, Delinquent Angels, but suspended production after her resignation from the bench in November 1950, in a storm of controversy and charges after the results of a special investigation ordered by Governor Gordon Browning were released.



The investigation surrounded illegal adoptions-for-profit by Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children's Home Society. It charged that approximately 20% of the illegal adoptions at the home were funneled through Kelley's court, where she would remove parental rights and provide Tann with documents to place the children as she deemed appropriate. Kelley was never prosecuted for any crimes associated with the home. She died at her son's home over four years after the scandal first broke, from complications due to a stroke.

Judge Kelley with a child in her court room. Notice the famous Tiffany Stained Glass Window behind her.

Publications

• A Friend in Court (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1942)
• Delinquent Angels (Brown-White-Lowell Press, 1947)
• Kelleygrams (Self-published, 1949)

Sources

• Report to Governor Gordon Browning on Shelby County Branch, Tennessee Children's Home Society. 1951, [Nashville] : State of Tennessee, Dept. of Public Welfare.

Obiturary 

Birth: 

	Oct. 13, 1879 Trenton Gibson County Tennessee, USA
Death:	Jan. 28, 1955 Little Rock Pulaski County Arkansas, USA
Author, Juvenile Court Judge. She wrote three books regarding handling problem children in the juvenile court system, "Kellygrams" , "A Friend in Court" and "Delinquent Angels". She was the Juvenile Court Judge in Shelby County, Tennessee from 1920 to 1950. Known as the "Little Irish Judge", she never wore a robe in court, opting for colorful dresses, jewels and always a flower pinned to her shoulder. She was quoted as saying "Robes would scare the children to death. They're not so timid when they appear before me and see that I am wearing a flower". Her formula in dealing with delinquents was simple: "We try the boy, not his offense. We seek to take away from him nothing but his mistakes". She was often quoted as saying that juvenile justice should be tempered with a sympathetic understanding of human problems. Shortly after she retired, she said favorable results were obtained in 85 to 90 percent of the 50,000 cases she had handled. Hallmark Productions was producing a movie based on her book, "Delinquent Angels", but suspended production after her resignation from the bench in November, 1950, in a storm of controversy and charges after the results of a special investigation ordered by Governor Gordon Browning of the State of Tennessee was released. The investigation surrounded illegal adoptions-for-profit by Miss Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children's Home Society. It charged that approximately 20% of the illegal adoptions at the home were funneled through Kelley's court, where she would remove parental rights and provide Tann with documents to place the children as she deemed appropriate. Judge Kelley was never prosecuted for any crimes associated with the home. She died at her sons home, Little Rock Arkansas attorney Heiskell Kelley, after complications due to a stroke. Family links:  Parents:   John Preston McGee (1835 - 1890)   Virginia Candace Elder McGee (1844 - 1889)  Spouse:   Thomas Fitzgerald Kelley (1873 - 1928)  Children:   Heiskell B. Kelley (1904 - 1979)*   Thomas Fitzgerald "Gerald" Kelley (1906 - 1939)*   Evelyn Camille Kelley (1910 - 1922)*  Siblings:   Howard Hawthorne McGee (1867 - 1895)*   Babbington McCauley McGee (1869 - 1926)*   Genevieve McGee McGehee (1871 - 1897)*   Camille McGee Kelley (1879 - 1955) *Calculated relationship
Burial: Forest Hill Cemetery Midtown Memphis Shelby County Tennessee, USA Plot: Section 11, Plot 138
Created by: Neil Loftiss Record added: Jun 25, 2009 Find A Grave Memorial# 38731655

External Links 

Source wikipedia.com

Georgia Tann

Georgia Tann (July 18, 1891 – September 15, 1950), born Beulah George Tann, was an American child trafficker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the unlicensed home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s until a state investigation into numerous instances of adoption fraud being perpetrated by her closed the institution in 1950. Tann died of cancer before the investigation made its findings public.

Illegal activities

Tann used pressure tactics, threats of legal action and other methods to take children from their birth parents, mostly poor single mothers, and sold them to the wealthy patrons. Tann also arranged for the taking of children born to inmates at Tennessee mental institutions and those born to wards of the state through her connections.

Tann also arranged for what her victims (now adult) refer to as kidnapping. 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 with the society because a family was experiencing illness or unemployment, only to find out later that the Society had adopted them out or had no record of the children ever being placed. Tann was also documented as taking children born to unwed mothers at birth, claiming that the newborns required medical care. When the mothers asked about the children, Tann told them that the babies had died, but they were actually placed in foster homes or adopted.

Tann's crimes were accomplished with the aid of Memphis 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 which 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 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.

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 a surrender of their children (ordered by Kelley) by demonstrating that they were unfit parents.

Tann destroyed records of the children that were processed through the Society and conducted minimal background checks on the adoptive homes. Many of the files of the children were fictionalized before being presented to the adoptive parents, which covered up the child's circumstances prior to being placed with the society. As a result, the Child Welfare League of America dropped the Society from its list of qualifying institutions in 1941.

The Georgia Tann/Tennessee Children's Home Society scandal resulted in adoption reform laws in Tennessee in 1951.

Out-of-state adoptions

Under Tennessee law at the time, the Home charged about $7 per adoption. Adoptions in states such as Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri could be arranged for $750.

However, Tann also had arranged for out-of-state private adoptions where she charged a premium, upwards of $5,000 per child, for her "services". It is alleged that she pocketed 75% of the fees from these adoptions for her own personal use and failed to report the income to either the Society Board or the Internal Revenue Service.

The Tennessee Children's Home Society was closed in 1950 and is not to be confused with the current Tennessee Children's Home, which is accredited by the state of Tennessee. This Tennessee Children's Home has no legacy connection with Georgia Tann or the Society which she operated.

Tann made millions selling children, 90% to New York and California. New York and California vowed to take action, but the children's adoptions were never investigated, no children were restored.

Notable personalities who used Tann's services (but were not aware of the tactics used by Tann to acquire many of the children processed through the Tennessee Children's Home Society) included actress Joan Crawford (daughters Christina Crawford, and twins Cathy and Cynthia were adopted 
through the agency). 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 and New York Governor Herbert Lehman, who signed a law sealing birth certificates from New York adoptees in 1935. New York State Adoptee Equality is working to undo the #TannLehmanLegacy.

In popular culture

The scandal was also the subject of two made for television films:

• Missing Children: A Mother's Story (1982) (TV) at the Internet Movie Database (1982)
• Stolen Babies (1993) (TV) at the Internet Movie Database (1993)

The subject of Georgia Tann also appears in an episode of Investigation Discovery's series Deadly Women titled "Above the Law" that aired September 13, 2013 and also appeared on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

See also

• Child laundering
• Child-selling

Sources

• Barbara Raymond. The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption. 2007. 320p. Carroll & Graf.
• PROFILE: Mary Margulis St. Louis Post - Dispatch St. Louis, Mo.: May 10, 1993. p. 1 Section: EVERYDAY MAGAZINE
• Report to Governor Gordon Browning on Shelby County Branch, Tennessee Children's Home Society. 1951, [Nashville] : State of Tennessee, Dept. of Public Welfare.

Obituary 
Birth: 

	Jul. 18, 1891 Philadelphia Neshoba County Mississippi, USA
Death:	Sep. 15, 1950 Memphis Shelby County Tennessee, USA
Black Market seller of children for profit. Georgia Tann (Born: Beulah George Tann) became the director of the Memphis Chapter of the Tennessee Children's Home Society in 1927. Through trickery, deceit and outright fraud, she stole children from parents through a variety of sources such as baby scouts, corrupt Judges and even more corrupt politicians. She placed over 5,000 children all over the country, many of them to Jewish families in New York, and to stars in California. Birth certificates were rewritten to make the children's background fit the desires of prospective parents. This included taking Christian children and giving them Jewish sounding names. Other records were destroyed, to cover the tracks of the Orphanage and their criminal acts of kidnapping. Children were often taken from their mothers under the pretence of seeking medical care. The mothers were later told their children died, and had been buried without notification. Many newborns were taken, and their mothers told they had been stillborn, and the bodies had been removed to lessen their grief. Children were placed without consideration of the stability of the families they were going to. Some were adopted as servants and farmhands, some to pedophiles for sexual abuse, while some lucky ones were adopted into a life of privilege and wealth. Tann ran ads in newspapers throughout the country with captions like "Want a real, live Christmas present?" Children would be delivered throughout the country by her workers, or her lesbian lover, partner and adopted daughter, Ann Atwood Hollinsworth , who 'volunteered' at the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Edward Hull "Boss Crump" Crump was the political clout behind Georgia Tann. He wielded great power and influence in Memphis, and throughout Tennessee. He would send his cronies to handle any ‘disputes', and use his influence to change laws to fit the needs of Georgia. Abe D. Waldauer Assistant City Attorney under Crump (also Georgias' personal attorney, and Chairman of the Tennessee Childrens Home Society), would rewrite laws to cover Georgias tracks. She contributed generously to Boss Crumps campaign coffers. Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelly provided an estimated 20% of the children Georgia placed. Judge Kelly would use the court to remove parental rights, and to give Georgia the necessary documentation to take children and place them as she wished. Later inquiries estimated that upward of 500 children that were not "easy to adopt", died, mostly through starvation and neglect. Many of their bodies have never been found. It is estimated that Tann made millions of dollars through trafficking children. "Fees" for her services ran between $750 and $5,000 each. Famous people who used Tanns services (who most likely were not aware of the history or tactics of Georgia Tann) include: * Joan Crawford (Daughters Christina author of "No Wire Hangers", and twins Cathy and Cynthia came from Tann) * June Allyson and husband Dick Powell. * Actress Lana Turner * The parents of Professional Wrestler, Ric Flair * Governor Herbert Lehman of New York. * Mobster Frank ‘The Enforcer' Nitti and his wife adopted their son, Joseph, from Tann. Mary Tyler Moore won an Emmy award for her portrayal of Tann in the television movie, "Stolen Babies," 1993. Tann died of cancer (Carcinosis, primary location uterus, according to Dr. Alma Richards on death certificate) on September 15, 1950, three days before Governor Gordon Browning of Tennessee filed charges against Tanns home. The home was permanently closed in December, 1950. ___________________________________________ Her Obituary Services for Miss Georgia Tann, who had headed the Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society for 26 years, will be held at 4 p.m. today at National Funeral Home. The Rev. James Watson, pastor of Whitehaven Presbyterian Church, will officiate. Burial will be at Hickory, Miss, her former home, tomorrow at 2:30, accompanied by services at the grave. The veteran social worker died at her home at 91 Stonewall at 4:20 a.m. yesterday after a long illness, which had confined her to bed since last Easter and which had become critical in the past few days. Death was due to cancer. She was 59. Miss Tann, who had operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis since 1924, during which time she had placed more than 5,000 babies for adoption was recognized as a national authority on adoption laws. Under her direction, the Memphis agency became one of the best known of its kind in the United States. She was the author of several magazine articles on the subject. Born at Hickory, Miss., she was a daughter of the late George C. Tann, chancellor of the Second District of Mississippi for 27 years. The interest that her father took in orphans and foundlings, through the operation of his court, led her into child welfare work. She was engaged in this in Mississippi and Texas before moving to Memphis. Among the first children she placed ware a small brother and sister, ages 9 and 5. They were adopted into the same home. Miss Tann related recently that the girl, now grown, has a degree in music and that the boy has finished his law school courses and had begun practicing. Four years ago she estimated that up to that time she had placed 5,000 children for adoption. While she kept no record of the subsequent total, the number is believed to run into the hundreds. Miss Tann was educated at Martha Washington College in Virginia and took social courses at Columbia University, New York for two summers. Her father desired to make a musician of her and she took an extended piano course, but her interest in children turned her to another career. Once Miss Tann was asked how adopted children turn out. "The answer is" she replied, "That 100 of our children turn out, on the average, much better than 100 picked from homes at random. The reason is that ours is a selective process. We select the child and we select the home. "The Organization keeps up with the child until it is 21 years of age, but the dealings are with the foster parents. We try to let the children forget. We stand in the background, ready to help if difficulties arise but never impressing it on the child that he is adopted." Miss Tann said girls whom she has placed for adoption, and who had grown up and married, often come to show her their babies and even their grandchildren. Miss Tann was a strong advocate of homeless children being adopted into private homes, instead of being placed into orphanages or similar institutions. In her testimony before a Tennessee Legeslative Committee hearing at Nashville in 1947, when proposed changes in the state's Adoption Law were being discussed, Miss Tann declared there were more than 30 homes seeking babies for adoption for every baby available for adoption. "Why are so many children kept in institutions at a cost to the taxpaying public of $10 or more a week?" she asked, illustrating her contention. Miss Tann had placed infants for adoption in many states, some far distant from Memphis. "It is better for the children for them to grow up in another city where there will be little or any possibility of interference by their former parents who have given them up" she once told a reporter. "They are beginning a new life in a new home and should not be molested." Miss Tann leaves am adopted daughter, Mrs. June Tann Watson of Brandon, Miss; her mother, Mrs. Beulah J Tann of Hickory, an adopted sister, Mrs. Ann Hollinsworth of Memphis and a niece, Mrs. Beulah Elizabeth Tann Burns of Newark, N.J. The Commercial Appeal, September 16, 1950 _______________________________________ By Lois Cooper The story of Georgia Tann is one of intrigue, fascination, horror, disbelief and many more words of description. It is a story of a very influential woman who was born and raised in Hickory, Mississippi. She achieved a position of outstanding prominence. Her life was one of fraternizing with the elite. Eleanor Roosevelt sought her counsel regarding child welfare. Pearl Buck asked her to collaborate on a book about adoption. She received a personal invitation to President Truman's Inauguration. She traveled in politically elite circles. And, while doing all of this, she visited with her mother often in Hickory. The beautiful Tann home, which is the second oldest home in Hickory, is located near Highway 503. There are residents in the home today and the home still has visions of grandeur. Georgia Tann is buried in the Hickory Cemetery along with her parents, George Clark Tann and Beulah Yates Tann, and her brother, Rob Roy Tann. It is a very nice Tann burial plot. Standing over Georgia's grave in the Hickory Cemetery, the average person would never know the controversy she stirred up during her lifetime. She had one of the largest black markets for children ever seen in the United States. From 1924 to 1950, Georgia Tann stole, or otherwise separated, more than 5,000 children from their families. Louise Bailey and I have long been interested in the Georgia Tann story and, in 2009, conducted extensive research on her activities using both primary and secondary sources as well as many interviews. A major source of information came from the book The Baby Thief by Barbara Raymond. The television movie, "Stolen Babies," was released in 1993 with Mary Tyler Moore portraying Georgia Tann. Articles on Tann's life also have been published in Good Housekeeping magazine. The Meridian Star did an article on Georgia Tann on March 25, 1993. Georgia Tann also gained national media attention on television series such as "Unsolved Mysteries" and "Probe." We do not know much about Georgia's young years in Hickory. Georgia's father was the most influential person in her life. Her feelings toward him were a mix of love and hate, or wanting to prove herself to him and to defy him. Georgia's parents were Judge George Clark Tann and Beulah Yates Tann. George Clark Tann's grandfather had served under William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe and his father was a Confederate war hero. George himself was the most educated man in Newton County and Judge of the Mississippi Second Chancery District Court. While George was respected, he was not well liked for he was arrogant, argumentative, and domineering. Georgia had a brother, Rob Roy Tann, who was three years older. While serving in World War I, he suffered what was then called shell shock and for the rest of his life suffered from tremors. He died of tuberculosis at age 46. Georgia majored in music and, after graduating in 1913 from Martha Washington College in Abingdon, Virginia, she taught school briefly in Columbus, Mississippi. However, she lacked the patience for teaching and may well have considered it an old-fashioned profession. Georgia was also familiar with social work, at that time in its infancy, having long practiced a form of it herself. Charity work was a refuge during her adolescence, perhaps providing an excuse for her absence from local parties and dances. While other girls primped for the parties, she put on starched, long-sleeved blouses and skirts that swept the floor and visited the local poor. By 1920, exploiting the lack of regulations on adoption and her father's position as a judge, Tann began placing children she had kidnapped from poor women. Georgia began working for Kate McWillie Powers Receiving Home for Children in Jackson which was affiliated with the Mississippi Children's Home Society. Georgia was run out of Mississippi for her "child-placing" methods and went to Texas. Georgia then moved to Memphis, TN. She became Executive Director of the Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Barbara Raymond said in her book, The Baby Thief, "Scores of children in the custody of Tann's Tennessee Children's Home Society died, making Memphis' infant mortality rate the highest in the country. Yet Tann was publicly lauded for her work. She also amassed a personal fortune selling children to the wealthy (including actors June Allyson, Dick Powell, and Joan Crawford). Virtually no robbed parents got their children back." There seemed to be no end to the pain that Georgia caused. While building her black market business, she had invented modern American adoption. To cover her kidnapping crimes, she falsified adoptees birth certificates, issued false certificates, and portrayed their adoptive parents as their birth parents. In 1950, the Tennessee Governor finally acknowledged Georgia's crimes. The adoptive parents could not bring themselves to investigate whether their children had been stolen for fear of having to return them. Georgia had many accomplices: Politicians, legislators, judges, attorneys, doctors, nurses, and social workers who scouted child victims. She operated for 26 years. It was not until she was three days from death with cancer that a Tennessee official told of her crimes. If the story of Georgia Tann teaches us anything, it is the importance of ridding adoption of lies and secrets. Thankfully, much as been done since Georgia's death to help parents find children through well respected adoption agencies. From The Newton County (MS) Historical and Genealogy Society, http://www.nchgs.org, written by Lois Cooper, August 8, 2010. ___________________________________________________ Camille McGee Kelley, judge of the Shelby County Family Court, was a jewel in the crown of the Memphis machine of Edward Hull Crump. At the time of her appointment in 1920, Kelley was only one of two female judges in the South and the only woman to sit as a juvenile court judge. Kelley was highly popular in Memphis and Shelby County, an easily recognizable figure in her trademark dresses, furs and a large flower always pinned to her chest. Kelley looked precisely like what she was: a friendly, well-to-do grandmother who was somewhat smug and condescending in freely dispensing her maternal wisdom to anyone who would listen. The Memphis Boss was always highly sensitive to the attacks of opponents on his political machine and Crump countenanced no graft or corruption from his subordinates. At the first hint of corruption, Crump moved with alacrity in removing the offender from office. Yet the reign of the matronly juvenile court judge would prove to be one of the worst cases of corruption in modern Memphis history and a sore embarrassment to Crump. One cannot detail the life and service of Judge Camille Kelley without relating the history of Miss Georgia Tann, who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Miss Tann would have a powerful, albeit malevolent, influence upon adoption of children. Like Judge Camille Kelley, Miss Georgia Tann had a matronly and benign appearance and no less than First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt believed her to be an expert in the field of childcare. Perhaps no one in the State of Tennessee had more to do with the confidentiality laws adopted by the General Assembly than Georgia Tann. Miss Tann used those laws to her advantage and apparently destroyed, altered or otherwise tampered with birth records to the extent where it became impossible to determine the parentage of thousands of children. Miss Georgia Tann turned adoption into a money-making enterprise and at a time when adoptions in Tennessee cost the princely sum of $7, some adoptions brokered by Tann cost as much as $5,000, roughly the equivalent of $84,000 in today's currency. Miss Tann operated her Tennessee Children's Home Society before the extensive welfare state existed in this country; there was little in the way of support, financial or otherwise, single mother's could count on at the time. Crump's Memphis was well run and Memphis won numerous awards for its cleanliness, safety, etc., yet one statistic likely vexed the Boss; it had the highest infant mortality rate in the country. Miss Georgia Tann was born in 1891, the daughter of a judge in Mississippi. Georgia was a nonconformist at an early age, altering her name from Beulah George Tann to the more feminine "Georgia." Georgia was not an especially attractive woman and she displayed little interest in settling down and marrying. Instead, Georgia Tann pursued one of the few avenues available to women who wished to become professionals in that era: social work. It not only afforded Georgia the opportunity for a career, but a means to escape from her home and her domineering father. Miss Tann rapidly concluded poor people could not possibly be fit parents. Her comments about poor people having children were both cruel and derisive; Miss Tann referred to them as "breeders" and the mothers as "cows." When Miss Georgia Tann embarked upon her unfortunate career, adoption was hardly a common practice. She would refine it to an art form and one that paid handsomely. Miss Tann was hired by the Mississippi Children's Home-Finding Society and she began finding homes for children, but soon discovered there were men and women who were nothing less than desperate to have a child and they were willing to pay. Miss Tann visited the home of a poor young widow named Rose Harvey, who lived in a cabin in Jasper, Mississippi. Rose was ill, suffering from diabetes, and pregnant. Her two-year old son, Onyx, was playing on the porch when Georgia Tann arrived and took the little boy. Rose's father was convinced to sign legal documents stating his daughter was an unfit mother and had abandoned Onyx. The brown-haired, brown-eyed little boy was given to another family and even though Rose managed to hire an attorney, she could not get her child back. It was that same year that Georgia Tann adopted a child herself; Miss Tann adopted a baby girl whom she named June. Quoted in Barbara Raymond's book about Miss Georgia Tann, June's daughter Vicci said, "Mother said Georgia Tann was a cold fish; she gave her material things, but nothing else. I don't why she bothered to adopt her." By 1924, Miss Georgia Tann was in Memphis, Tennessee and started the Tennessee Children's Home Society. In time, some of the wealthiest couples in the country would adopt babies from Georgia Tann. Several movie stars adopted babies from Miss Georgia Tann, including Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, and Dick Powel and his wife, June Allyson. Governor and Mrs. Herbert Lehman adopted a baby from Georgia Tann; Lehman was the lieutenant governor to Franklin D. Roosevelt and FDR's successor. He was also enormously wealthy, being the heir to Lehman Brothers. Georgia Tann owned considerable property and purchased a home in Memphis at 91 Stonewall Street, a comfortable bungalow type structure of some 2,200 square feet, three bedrooms and two baths. Miss Tann lived there with her partner, Ann Atwood Hollinsworth. Tann officially adopted Mrs. Hollinsworth in Dyer County a few years before her death. Mrs. Hollinsworth had a son, Jack, who was killed in an American Airlines plane crash in 1943. Mrs. Hollinsworth would outlive her partner by almost fifty years, dying in 1995. Once a baby was in Miss Tann's custody, she would alter the birth records beyond all recognition and create a more acceptable story accounting for the baby's birth, which was calculated to appeal to prospective adoptive parents. Rather than simply being the child of a single mother or poor couple, the baby was the result of a brief union between a young mother of good breeding and her boyfriend of equally social standing. Miss Tann was not above creating a background for a particular child to suit prospective adoptive parents. Georgia Tann's personal appearance likely actually aided her in concealing her true nature. A rather dumpy woman, who usually looked rather rumpled, looked like anything save for the aristocrat she pretended to be. Her graying hair was cut short and seemed only haphazardly styled. Miss Georgia Tann looked quite innocuous; she did not seem in any way threatening. She appeared to be an inoffensive middle-aged woman and likely looked precisely like what many perceived to be a professional social worker. Miss Tann, for all her faults and loathsome nature, was quite shrewd. She employed Abe Waldauer, a high-ranking member of the Crump machine, as her attorney. In Memphis, Waldauer was extremely well connected and he proved to be an effective ally in lobbying the Tennessee General Assembly. Waldauer was sympathetic to Miss Tann, as he was an adoptive father himself. Miss Tann's first contact with Abe Waldauer seems to have been in 1933 when she wanted the lawyer's help with her invalid brother. Georgia Tann wrote a petulant letter to Waldauer on January 28, 1933, complaining, "I have tried several times recently to see you and talk with you in regard to my brother's claim against the government." Eventually Waldauer became both Georgia Tann's personal attorney as well as that of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. The Board of the Tennessee Children's Home Society included some of the "best" people in Memphis; Walter Chandler would go on to serve as Congressman from the district, as well as Mayor of Memphis. John Reichman was a former Shelby County sheriff and Mrs. E. W. Hale was the wife of the head of the Shelby County Commission. The famous author Pearl Buck even wished to collaborate on a book with Georgia Tann. Yet some suppose E. H. Crump knew exactly what Miss Tann was doing and she somehow enjoyed his personal protection. It seems unlikely she fooled practically everybody save for Boss Crump. And Miss Georgia Tann had a lot of people fooled. Georgia Tann helped to formulate the laws on adoption in Tennessee, some of which exist to this day. Due to the nature of her business, it was imperative to Miss Tann that adoption records remained confidential and closed. Miss Tann was quite secretive and there appear to be instances where she even deceived her own lawyer. Georgia Tann would contact Judge Kelley with a list of changes in Tennessee's laws which she believed needed to be changed. Judge Kelley would then send the list on her own stationery to Abe Waldauer, giving Waldauer the notion those changes were requested by Judge Kelley and the Shelby County Family Court. Many of the children given up or sold for adoption by Miss Georgia Tann were fortunate enough to find loving homes, but there were many who were far less lucky. There were numerous stories of birth parents and mothers who literally spent their entire lives trying to locate their lost children. Miss Tann conceived the idea of placing ads in local newspapers, complete with a photograph of a child well scrubbed and nicely dressed under the headline, "Want A Real Live Christmas Present?" Another featured a smiling little boy grasping a ball under the headline, "Yours for the Asking!" The advertisement, which ran in the Memphis Press Scimitar on December 8, 1935, read: "Yours for the asking! "George wants to play catch but needs a Daddy to complete the team. ‘Catch this ball, Daddy!' How would YOU like to have this handsome five-year old to play ‘catch' with you? How would you like his chubby arms to slip around your neck and give you a bear-like hug? His name is George and he may be yours for the asking, if you hurry along your request to the Christmas Baby Editor of the Press-Scimitar. "In cooperation with Miss Georgia Tann of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, the Press-Scimitar will place 25 babies for adoption this Christmas." Even the local newspapers believed they were rendering a real service to the children by finding them loving homes. Like Judge Kelley, Miss Georgia Tann was actually lauded by an unsuspecting population for what most believed to be her good work. National publications referred to her as "the foremost leading light in adoption laws" in the country. Eleanor Roosevelt actually sought Miss Tann's advice on issues regarding child welfare and President Harry Truman invited her to his inauguration. If anything, Miss Georgia Tann was outwardly respectable. Miss Tann's alliance with Judge Kelley gave her enormous power. Armed with not only the power of the court, Miss Tann had the resources at her command from the Memphis Police Department and the Shelby County's sheriff's office through Judge Kelley. There is good reason to believe Judge Kelley was paid by Miss Georgia Tann for her cooperation. By the 1940s, some uncomfortable questions were being asked. Miss Tann owned considerable property, including a motel, a large farm and home named "Tannwood" and was driven about town in a chauffeured Cadillac limousine. Evidently folks were encouraged to believe Georgia Tann came from a prominent and wealthy Mississippi family, so fewer eyebrows were raised than might have been the case otherwise. Very few social workers had the means to employ a chauffeur who actually wore a uniform. The Crump machine suffered devastating defeats in the 1948 elections. Crump refused to support Senator Tom Stewart for reelection that year, preferring instead to back Cookeville Judge John A. Mitchell, whom the Memphis Boss had never even met. Crump's political partner, Senator K. D. McKellar, tried to change Crump's mind, but was unsuccessful. Senator McKellar did not believe Judge Mitchell was a strong candidate, a reality that became more abundantly clear as the Democratic primary approached. Both McKellar and Crump were backing incumbent Jim Nance McCord for the gubernatorial nomination in 1948, but Governor McCord was mortally wounded by having instituted a sales tax for education. Tennesseans apparently less appreciated the free textbooks for their children than they resented the new tax. McCord was opposed by former Governor Gordon Browning, a long-time opponent of both Crump and McKellar. The election of Gordon Browning and Estes Kefauver in the Senate race ended the long domination of Tennessee politics by Senator McKellar and E. H. Crump. The whispers surrounding Miss Georgia Tann's Tennessee Children's Home Society soon reached the ears of Governor Browning. The governor realized were the allegations true, it would be a profound embarrassment to Crump and his machine. Browning authorized an investigation and announced the findings at a press conference. They were both appalling and devastating. The focus of Governor Browning's comments had less to do with the children, their parents or the theft of babies than profiteering illegally while the Tennessee Children's Home Society received state funding. Browning's choice to lead the investigation was attorney Robert L. Taylor (later for years a federal judge sitting in Knoxville) who termed many of the adoptions by Georgia Tann as "mail order adoptions". Taylor's report revealed some judges in Memphis had urged that the Tennessee Children's Home Society be investigated years ago. Georgia Tann's operation had also been investigated by John Brown, U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee and a McKellar appointee. Brown's probe clearly indicated adoptive parents were being seriously overcharged for investigation and transportations costs. Tennessee's Commissioner of Welfare had concluded that more than 1000 babies sent to New York and California had cost the parents perhaps as much as $1,000,000, a sum roughly equivalent to approximately $9,700,000 in today's dollars. Ironically, Miss Georgia Tann was by that time outside the reach of the law. Within days of the governor's press conference, Georgia Tann died from cancer inside her home and in the comfort of her own bed. Tann died from uterine cancer and strangely had never sought any kind of treatment. Death came for her before the law could. Camille Kelley, for thirty years judge of Shelby County's Family Court, quickly announced she was resigning for reasons of health. It was readily apparent Crump had forced her resignation from the bench. Past seventy at the time, Judge Kelley also escaped prosecution, retiring quietly and living with her son, where she died from a stroke in 1955. The victims, the children adopted out to families across the country, were only granted the right to view their birth certificates and records of their adoptions by the State of Tennessee in 1995. Some were reunited with members of their families and some are still looking to this day. The Knoxville Focus, By Ray Hill, June 4, 2014 Family links:  Parents:   George Clark Tann (1858 - 1932)   Beulah Isabella Yates Tann (1868 - 1963)  Children:   June Ann Tann Hawks (1921 - 1972)*  Sibling:   Rob Roy Tann (1888 - 1934)*   Georgia Tann (1891 - 1950) *Calculated relationship
Burial: Hickory Cemetery Hickory Newton County Mississippi, USA
Created by: Neil Loftiss Record added: Jun 12, 2009 Find A Grave Memorial# 38235660

 

Source: wikipedia.com and Findagrave.com

 
 

Georgia Tann: A Story Of Stolen Babies

The story of Georgia Tann is one of intrigue, fascination, horror, disbelief and many more words of description.  It is a story of a very influential woman who was born and raised in Hickory, Mississippi.  She achieved a position of outstanding prominence.  She was very wealthy and fraternized with the elite.  Her life was one of fraternizing with the elite.  Eleanor Roosevelt sought her counsel regarding child welfare.  Pearl Buck asked her to collaborate on a book about adoption.  She received a personal invitation to President Truman's Inauguration.  She traveled in politically elite circles.  And, while doing all of this, she visited with her mother often in Hickory.  The beautiful Tann home, which is the second oldest home in Hickory, is located near Highway 503.  There are residents in the home today and the home still has visions of grandeur.  

Georgia Tann is buried in the Hickory Cemetery along with her parents, George Clark Tann and Beulah Yates Tann, and her brother, Rob Roy Tann.  It is a very nice Tann burial plot.  Standing over Georgia's grave in the Hickory Cemetery, the average person would never know the controversy she stirred up during her lifetime.  She had one of the largest black markets for children ever seen in the United States.  From 1924 to 1950, Georgia Tann stole, or otherwise separated, more than 5,000 children from their families. 

Louise Bailey and I have long been interested in the Georgia Tann story and, in 2009, conducted extensive research on her activities  using both primary and secondary sources as well as many interviews.  A major source of information came from the book The Baby Thief  by Barbara Raymond.  The television movie, "Stolen Babies," was released in 1993 with Mary Tyler Moore portraying Georgia Tann.  Articles on Tann's life also have been published in Good Housekeeping magazine.  The Meridian Star did an article on Georgia Tann on March 25, 1993.  Georgia Tann also gained national media attention on television series such as "Unsolved Mysteries" and “Probe."

We do not  know much about Georgia's young years in Hickory.  Georgia's father was the most influential person in her life.  Her feelings toward him were a mix of love and hate, or wanting to prove herself to him and to defy him.  Georgia's parents were Judge George Clark Tann and Beulah Yates Tann.  George Clark Tann's grandfather had served under William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe and his father was a Confederate war hero.  George himself was the most educated man in Newton County and Judge of the Mississippi Second Chancery District Court.  While George was respected, he was not well liked for he was arrogant, argumentative, and domineering.  Georgia had a brother, Rob Roy Tann, who was three years older.  While serving in World War I, he suffered what was then called shell shock and for the rest of his life suffered from tremors.  He died of tuberculosis at age 46.

Above: Georgia Tann, with the help of a barber,
grooms Lucy, a ward, for adoption.

Georgia majored in music and, after graduating in 1913 from Martha Washington College in Abingdon, Virginia, she taught school briefly in Columbus, Mississippi.  However, she lacked the patience for teaching and may well have considered it an old-fashioned profession.

Georgia was also familiar with social work, at that time in its infancy, having long practiced a form of it herself.  Charity work was a refuge during her adolescence, perhaps providing an excuse for her absence from local parties and dances.  While other girls primped for the parties, she put on starched, long-sleeved blouses and skirts that swept the floor and visited the local poor.

 By 1920, exploiting the lack of regulations on adoption and her father's position as a judge, Tann began placing children she had kidnapped from poor women.  Georgia began working for Kate McWillie Powers Receiving Home for Children in Jackson which was affiliated with the Mississippi Children's Home Society.  Georgia was run out of Mississippi for her "child-placing" methods and went to Texas.  Georgia then moved to Memphis, TN.  She  became Executive Director of the Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. 

Barbara Raymond said in her book, The Baby Thief, "Scores of children in the custody of Tann's Tennessee Children's Home Society died, making Memphis' infant mortality rate the highest in the country.  Yet Tann was publicly lauded for her work.  She also amassed a personal fortune selling children to the wealthy (including actors June Allyson, Dick Powell, and Joan Crawford).  Virtually no robbed parents got their children back."

Above: Memphis Home of Georgia Tann

There seemed to be no end to the pain that Georgia caused.  While building her black market business, she had invented modern American adoption.  To cover her kidnapping crimes, she falsified adoptees birth certificates, issued false certificates, and portrayed their adoptive parents as their birth parents. 

In 1950, the Tennessee Governor finally acknowledged Georgia's crimes.  The adoptive parents could not bring themselves to investigate whether their children had been stolen for fear of having to return them.

Georgia had many accomplices:  Politicians, legislators, judges, attorneys, doctors, nurses, and social workers who scouted child victims.  She operated for 26 years.  It was not until she was three days from death with cancer that a Tennessee official told of her crimes. 

If the story of Georgia Tann teaches us anything, it is the importance of ridding adoption of lies and secrets.  Thankfully, much as been done since Georgia's death to help parents find children through well respected adoption agencies.

Written By: Lois Cooper 

Stolen Babies (1993 TV Movie)

A 1940's Tennessee welfare worker learns that Georgia Tann, the charismatic head of a local adoption agency, is actually running a black-market baby ring behind the Tennessee Children's Home Society.  

Source: nchgs.org /  imdb.com