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 |
