Georgia Tann

Illegal activities

Tann used pressure tactics, threats of legal action and other methods to take children from their birth parents, mostly poor single mothers, so she might sell them to her 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. New York Governor Herbert Lehman, who signed a law sealing birth certificates from New York adoptees in 1935, also adopted a child through the agency.

In popular culture

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

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.

The Subject of Georgia Tann also appears in a novel entitled "Before We Were Yours" by Lisa Wingate.

Memorial to victims

Over several decades, nineteen of the children who died at the Tennessee Children's Home Society were buried in a 14x13 lot at the historic Elmwood Cemetery (Memphis, Tennessee) with no headstones. Tann bought the lot sometime before 1923 and recorded the children there by their first names, "Baby Estelle," "Baby Joseph" and so on. In 2015, the cemetery raised $13,000 to erect a monument to their memory. It reads, in part, "In memory of the 19 children who finally rest here unmarked if not unknown, and of all the hundreds who died under the cold, hard hand of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Their final resting place unknown. Their final peace a blessing. The hard lesson of their fate changed adoption procedure and law nationwide."