Stolen Lives

Georgia Tann believed the rich were better than those without means. She also believed lower-income couples should not have children This is the story of how thousands of children were stolen and sold in the black market. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to American shadows, a production of I heart
radio and grim and mild from Aaron Bankey. In the
eighteen fifties, America was struggling. Carpenters couldn't keep up with

(00:25):
the daily influx of immigrants, housing shortage loomed, epidemics like
smallpox and cholera and the lack of jobs further sent
the country into a depression. Children whose parents died from
one of the many diseases running rampant found themselves orphaned. Sometimes,
families who didn't want or couldn't afford their children abandoned them.

(00:46):
Of the five dred thousand New York City residents at
the time, it's estimated that thirty thousand were houseless children.
Kids sold rags, matches or newspapers to survive. Some worked
in factories, others who joined street gangs were frequently arrested
and put into the same jails as adults. Some of
these children were just five years old. There were orphanages,

(01:08):
but not enough, and they rarely provided the education or
care children needed. One Charles Loring, brace, a Protestant minister,
thought orphanages amounted to little more than warehouses and wanted
more for the kids. In eighteen fifty three he founded
the children's aid society. He provided basic schooling and religious education,

(01:29):
along with teaching kids a trade. Unfortunately, the children's aid
society didn't have room for all the houseless children. Determined
to save more kids, brace came up with another solution.
In eighteen fifty three, he began sending orphans to farms
in New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. He hoped the children
would find homes of families where they had a better

(01:51):
chance of survival and the more promising future. The solution
cost more than the children's aid society could afford. Undaunted,
he began a fundraising campaign with the wealthiest city residents.
The fundraiser was a success and the trains carrying orphans
branched out to other cities in the Midwest. When the
orphan train pulled into southwestern Michigan in eighteen fifty four,

(02:12):
thirty seven of the forty five children on board found
new homes. The last eight found homes in Iowa. Between
Eighteen fifty five and eighteen seventy five, an average of
pre thousand children a year rode the trains. Once they
arrived at their destinations, a chaperone led them to gathering
places where couples selected children from the group. In a way,

(02:32):
the process resembled of livestock auction. The new parents signed
documents promising to care for and feed the children. In exchange,
the kids understood that they had to help work on
the farms. While some children found loving homes, others were
taken to become manual laborers. When he was just eight
years old, Elliott boarded a train heading to Arkansas. All

(02:54):
he had were the clothes he wore in a small
cardboard box that held everything he owned. He had been
removed from his abusive and Alcoholic Father and as he
sat on the train, watching the scenery go past his window,
it felt like he had his entire future ahead of him.
Elliott refused to go with the first man who selected him,
but eventually found a home with a great family of

(03:16):
fellow orphans like Andrew Burke and John Brady, even went
on to become governors. These three were among the lucky ones.
The society didn't vet potential parents and siblings were often separated.
No provisions were made for the adopted children if their
new parents died, often rendering them houseless again. The orphan
trains ran for seventy five years. The children's aid society

(03:39):
was far from perfect, but it rescued thousands of kids
from life on the streets and paved the way for
the foster care system. Charles Brace had the children's best
interests to heart, but others did not. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum.
Welcome to American shadows. It started with flu like symptoms.

(04:07):
Kate beyond the kept working, though it wasn't easy. Running
a restaurant was difficult enough, but being sick in a
sweltering Tennessee summer made it that much worse. The sickness
progressed from August one until August of Eight. Kate died,
becoming the first victim of yellow fever in Memphis. Previously,

(04:28):
the disease had only struck New Orleans and no one
understood how yellow fever spread, so they quarantined anyone afflicted.
Of course, people continued to fall ill. It had first
arrived in New Orleans on an incoming ship, the Charles
B Wood. The captain and engineer's families all fell ill.
They survived. Unfortunately, a four year old girl living nearby

(04:51):
did not. The yellow fever reached epidemic proportions in New Orleans.
On August tenth of that year, the city reported four
thirty one cases and a hundred and eighteen deaths. Doctors
couldn't find a cure. The go to treatments of blood
letting and carbolic acid didn't work. A fifth of the
city's residents fled. But when the news reached Memphis, the

(05:13):
mayor shut down the train lines and put the city
under quarantine, but lawsuits brought on by local business owners
forced officials to reopen the trade routes. It's possible that
the trains brought the mosquitoes to Memphis, or at the
least that they brought people already infected with yellow fever
of the mosquitoes that bit them spread the disease to others.

(05:33):
The city's swampy environs, with high summer heat and humidity,
made for the perfect mosquito breeding ground. But when Kate
Beyonda died, newspapers were quick to report cases and deaths.
The city officials tried to calm the public despite the
growing death toll. Within a single day in August, Memphis
recorded seventy three deaths. In September, the average death toll

(05:55):
rose to two hundred a day. The funeral bells rang
almost constantly. Residents fled Memphis by the thousands. When the
first frost came, yellow fever cases dropped as the mosquitoes died.
By the end of the year, MEMPHIS had recorded seventeen
thousand cases and five thousand deaths, leaving the city in
financial ruin. Throughout the southeast, eighty thousand people had become infected.

(06:19):
Of those, twenty thousand didn't survive. Still believing the disease
spread from human contact or possibly a lack of sanitary conditions,
the city embarked on a massive clean up. A people
became more interested in public health practices and Memphis began
a slow process of recovery. Those most affected by the
epidemic were the children, many of whom lost one or

(06:41):
both parents to yellow fever. A men and women who
lost a spouse had difficulty making ends meet, and it
wasn't uncommon for single parents to send their children to
a relative or an orphanage children without known relatives who
lost both parents had no one to care for them.
As difficulties rose, more were a band end, forced to

(07:01):
find a way to support themselves. Older children searched for jobs.
Farm hands and factory workers tooking kids as cheap labor
in exchange for food and a place to sleep. A
child labor in the United States peaked in the early
twentieth century, and back then, factory owners often preferred children.
They had no rights or protections regarding violence or safety

(07:22):
in the workplace. Kids were also considered more manageable than
their adult counterparts and far less likely to strike adoption
in the eighteen hundreds worked differently than it does today.
There actually was no official method of conducting an adoption,
no paperwork, no court cases and no way of tracking
the adopted kids. Society Stigma on on Web Mother's complicated

(07:45):
the problem. Women were pressured to place children borne out
of wedlock with orphanages or give them up for adoption
in order to save their and their child's reputations. Adoptive
parents chose infants over older kids, preferring to raise a
child who had no memory of warp ties to a
previous family. Children from low income families or those who
weren't white were far less likely to find homes. When

(08:08):
the adoption of Children Act went into effect in eighteen,
fifty one courts became more active in a child's well being.
Charities and private homes provided some care. Eventually these came
under government control, though they retained certain freedoms in terms
of a child's treatment or placement in a new home.
The Sisters of St Mary opened a school in eighteen

(08:29):
seventy four. When the yellow fever epidemic hit in eighteen
seventy eight, they stayed while most clergymen fled. The city
authorities asked them to take over the Canfield asylum for orphans.
Eager to help, the sisters took in fifty children in
four days. Edward crump knew all too well the ravages

(08:57):
of yellow fever. The disease took his father during the
outbreak in eighteen seventy eight, leaving his mother to support
him and his two siblings. While she managed to keep
the family together, they struggled to keep afloat. The children
pitched in, however they could. None of them wanted to
be separated from each other or their mother. At Fourteen

(09:17):
crump dropped out of school to find work. At seventeen
he left Mississippi and relocated to Memphis. He couldn't have
arrived at a worse time. The city was in a
deep procession and crump had very little to his name.
His earlier life in struggles influenced him to work hard
and better himself, and he eventually found employment as a clerk.

(09:38):
In his free time, he joined social clubs to seek
out contacts that might further his political aspirations. In nineteen
O two, he went his sweetheart, Bessie, a daughter of
a prominent socialite. With his father in Law's help, crump
purchased a saddle and harness company. The company was successful,
but after eight years he sold the business and dove

(09:58):
head first into his true calling, politics. His hard work
and dedication paid off. A crump became the city mayor
in nineteen ten. He worked to clean up the city's
sanitation issues. In addition, he became a staunch supporter of
the fire service, helping to create a state of the
art fire department. Sometime in the early nineteen twenties, crump

(10:20):
met one Georgia Tan. He quickly became an avid supporter
of her work in child services. For All the good
had done for the city, his connection with Georgia would
remain a dark spot on his reputation. It might have
looked like Georgia had the children's best interests at heart,
but she had different motivations. Unlike crump, Georgia grew up

(10:42):
living a charmed life. She was born Beulah George Tan
in Philadelphia, Mississippi. In her father, George, was a respected
judge and her mother, Beulah, had been a well educated
school teacher. George ruled absolute over the household and demanded
that his wishes take priority over anything else. If Judge
Tan decided something needed doing, there was no discussion. The

(11:05):
task must be done quickly and to his liking. So
when he decided that his daughter would become a pianist,
Georgia threw herself into practice, even though she despised playing.
She wanted to become a lawyer, but her father scoffed.
He didn't think law was a suitable occupation for women.
He had made up his mind and in nine thirteen

(11:25):
he sent her to Martha Washington College to major in
music and despite her father's wishes, Georgia took the bar
exam and passed. Though a few women had successfully practiced
law in the United States, Georgia decided on a different
career path, one her father found more acceptable for women
of the day social work. There was a conflict, though.

(11:46):
Georgia firmly believed that wealthy people were far superior to
the poor, and she thought lower class individuals shouldn't have children,
mainly because they lacked the money to adequately provide for them.
Her first job as a social worker was in ninety
two at the Mississippi Children's Home Society. Georgia took her
bias too far and her superiors fired her for removing

(12:08):
children from poor households without cause. Georgia moved to Memphis
to take advantage of her father's business connections. There she
took an executive secretary position at the Tennessee Children's home society.
In the nineteen twenties. References were used instead of background
checks and no one at the society looked into her past.
There Georgia settled into domestic life with partner Ann Atwood,

(12:31):
who had moved with her. They had two children, an
infant son and had had out of wedlock, and George's
adopted daughter. But we don't know whether their relationship was
romantic because same sex relationships were so frowned upon. But
domestic partnerships between women weren't entirely uncommon, polite society reframed
such pairings as Boston marriages. For two years, Georgia relentlessly

(12:56):
used her connections to further her career until she had
complete control over the society. Finally, at the Top, Georgia
focused on her true goal, gaining money and power by
trafficking children. Georgian new intimidation worked. When she entered poor neighborhoods,

(13:23):
she wore crisp, heavily starched long sleeved shirts and a
full length skirt. Her position at the school and her
father's connections insured she received little opposition from authorities. She
also made her own connections, namely former Mayor Edward crump.
Though he no longer held office, he still had plenty
of influence and power in Memphis. When complaints about George's

(13:46):
practices rolled in, crump helped to change Tennessee's adoption laws
in her favor. One Abe Waaldour, who had served under crump,
became George's attorney and the attorney for the Tennessee Children's
home society. While other homes were required to get licenses,
Georgia and Waldour refused. With their connections, the laws simply
didn't apply to them. A license would have cost money

(14:09):
and cut into their profits. Each adoption would have cost
an additional seven dollars. Georgia charged up to five thousand
dollars per adoption. With so much money to be made,
those connected to the society's adoptions had motivation to hide
the scheme. Georgia had plenty of high powered people in
her pocket, from politicians and police chiefs to the underworld.

(14:30):
She became so successful that Waldour often referred to the
orphans as the merchandise. Acquiring new children was easy. All
Georgia had to do was visit low income housing districts.
She often sweet talked poor families out of their kids
or told the family that she had to remove the
child due to a complaint, even if no such complaint
had been filed. Scouts helped to keep an eye out

(14:53):
for attractive and healthy kids, preferably those who were white
with blonde hair and blue eyes. Scouts Times stole these
children from their yards or daycare or kidnap them from
churches or homes, and Georgia drove through poor neighborhoods looking
for the most attractive kids and offered them a ride
in her fancy car. Then should whisk them away to

(15:14):
the society where they had never see their parents again.
Unwed mothers made easy targets and Georgia's scouts kept an
eye out for them too, especially at hospitals and prisons.
Without support from the fathers or the state, the women
often accepted her offer of help. She would offer to
pay for medical treatment for sick kids and take them
to the hospital for care. When women tried to collect

(15:37):
their children, Georgia presented them with an enormous bill. When
the mother couldn't pay, the child was taken away and
placed in George's care. In another tactic, Georgia would offer
an unwed mother a temporary place to keep her kids
while she found a home or a job. Once the
mother finally established herself and tried to collect her children,
she was told they had been adopted. The mother had

(15:59):
no report. Part of the laws crump helped form were
sealed adoptions. Hospital maternity wards also became a favorite place
to find kids. While new mothers were still sedated, Georgia
asked them to sign routine paperwork. The paperwork turned out
to be adoption papers. The society nearly served as a
temporary holding station. Conditions were deplorable. Infants were drugged to

(16:24):
keep them from crying. Neglect and abuse were common and
the children were kept entirely indoors. They received little to
no medical treatment or schooling. Over five hundred kids died
in her care. Georgia paid for advertisements in newspapers from
New York to Los Angeles. Children were auctioned to the
highest bidder. She took great care to ensure most children

(16:45):
were adopted out of state. Actress Joan Crawford adopted twins
Kathy and Cynthia. Film stars June Allison and her husband
Dick Powell adopted a son. New York Governor Herbert Lehman,
who also signed a law sealing adoption records in his
eight adopted a kid from the home. Between nineteen four
and nineteen fifty, Georgia arranged over five thousand adoptions. Older

(17:08):
Children's birth certificates were altered to make them more adoptable
and to prevent birth parents from finding them. The end
finally came when crump's Nemesis, Gordon Browning became governor in
nineteen fifty. Browning learned about the trafficking from an investigator
on September twelfth of that year, Browning stood before the
press and disclosed the horrors behind the Tennessee children's home

(17:31):
society and the charges against Georgia ton. Three days later,
Georgia died from undiagnosed cancer. Those working alongside her quietly
resigned and no one else was ever charged. One evening

(17:55):
in nine Alma's sipple sat down after a long day
to enjoy a few TV shows. After flipping through the channels,
she decided to watch NBC's Popular Program unsolved mysteries. The
show had a large following and people enjoyed helping solve
cold cases. At the end of each show, host Robert
Stack asked for the audience's help and gave them a

(18:16):
hotline to call with any information that might bring killers
and other criminals to justice or help locate missing persons.
It was late and Alma was sleepy, but when a
woman's face splashed across the screen, she jolted upright and
let out a scream. The woman's smug features had been
etched in her memory and the woman in the photo

(18:37):
had stolen her daughter decades before. Back in Alma lived
in a one room apartment with her toddler son and
infant daughter. She was just another young mother struggling to
make ends meet. A woman claiming to be from the
Tennessee Children's home society visited her, insisting a neighbor had
filed a complaint of child abuse. Stunned, Alma allowed the

(18:59):
woman in to show that the children were perfectly fine,
though Irma had fallen slightly ill. The woman took special
interest in Little Irma, a beautiful child with reddish blonde
curls and cute dimples. Alma recalled how calm and confident
the woman was, how she seemed concerned over Irma's health.
She offered to take Irma to the doctor, which required

(19:19):
Alma to sign papers granting permission to the society. Without
money to pay for a doctor, Alma agreed, and then
the woman swept up her baby daughter and left. Alma
arrived at Memphis general a few days later and watched
Irma Sleeping peacefully, and when she tried to take her
daughter home, the hospital told her that Irma belonged to
the society. She called the home over and over for

(19:42):
days until Georgia finally answered. Alma Sat in stunned silence
when Georgia coldly told her that little Irma had died
from complications of pneumonia. Alma couldn't believe it. Her daughter
had been fine just days before. Georgia told her that
the city had buried Irma in an unmarked grave and
hung up for years. Alma searched for a grave that

(20:03):
might be her daughters. Now, sitting in her chair, she
paid close attention to Robert Stack. He asked potential victims
to come forward and contact Tennessee's right to now agency.
Alma called immediately. Months later, Danny Glad, the volunteer agency's president,
contacted her. Not only was Irma still alive, but had

(20:23):
also found her adoption papers, though the address for the
adopted parents was blank. Alma's heart fell. It looked like
a dead end. Then an independent searcher found her. Irma,
now Sandra Kimbrel, was in Cincinnati working as a registered nurse.
When Alma contacted her, Sandra was somewhat surprised. While she

(20:44):
knew she was adopted, she had no idea she had
been stolen as a baby. The two talked for hours
and began to plan their reunion. Alma and her daughter
were fortunate. We may never honestly know how many families
Georgia Tan destroyed. There's more to this story. Stick around

(21:04):
after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.
It's normal for parents to worry about how their kids
will turn out as adults. Even more normal to wonder
if children are shaped more by nature or nurture. The
debate has gone on for decades how much of a

(21:27):
child's personality is formed by treatment and environment, and how
much is influenced by genetics. In the nineties it seemed
that parents and researchers just might get some answers. Robert
Schaffran spent his first year at a college in upstate
New York. He wondered why people often acted as though
they knew him. He quickly learned that he resembled another

(21:47):
student named Eddie Galland Eddie supposedly could have passed for
his twin. Although Eddie no longer went to the same school,
Robert was intrigued. He trapped down an address and went
to visit his doppelganger. Eddie ants heard and the two
stared at each other. It was as though the men
were looking into a mirror. They shared the same build
and facial features. They had identical complexions in the same

(22:10):
dark hair a quick comparison of birthdays revealed that they
were both born on July twelfth of nineteen sixty one.
Eddie and Robert knew that they had been adopted but
had no idea that they were twins. The stranger than
fiction story spread across the country. People were fascinated and
wanted to know how two identical twins had randomly come
into contact with each other. They'd grown up just hours apart.

(22:33):
The story seemed unbelievable, but was about to get weirder.
Miles away at another college student, David Kellman, couldn't believe
the photo in the paper. He stared at the two
men who looked exactly like him. After reading the story,
he immediately tracked down Eddie Gallant's home phone number, and
Mrs Gallan answered and heard what sounded like her son's voice.

(22:55):
She was astounded to learn that her son, who she
had no idea had one brother, now had two. In
nineteen sixty one, a teenage girl had given birth the
three boys at Hillside Hospital in New York. She gave
them up for adoption and the triplets were taken to
the Louise Wise Services Adoption Agency. The boys were separated
while living at the agency. For the next six months,

(23:17):
three couples living less than a hundred miles apart each
applied to adopt a child. The agency told the parents
that the infant they were interested in was part of
a study on childhood development. They were also led to
believe that promising to comply with future visits would increase
the chances that they'd be selected to adopt. For Ten years,
Doctor Peter Newbauer and his assistants visited the families several

(23:40):
times a year after the study ended. Researchers have suggested
that new Bauer and his team still monitored the children
from a distance and during the initial visits, Newbauer and
his staff performed cognitive tests. The boys were asked to
draw and solve puzzles and answer questions while assistants filmed
the visit. The parents were also Shton it turned out

(24:01):
that each of the boys often banged their heads against
the bars and their crips. The families learned the adoption agency,
which had since shuttered its doors, had been part of
the study. They assisted new Bauer in placing the triplets
into three families, each with a different economic status. The
three brothers exchanged stories of their childhood. In Teen Years,

(24:22):
David and Eddie had spent time in psychiatric hospitals. Robert
was on probation stemming from his connection to a murder
in robbery in night. The boys weren't the only children
in Dr New Bauer's study on nature versus nurture. He
ran similar experiments on sets of twins, and none of
whom randomly came into contact with their siblings. All the

(24:42):
twins had been separated in the name of research. Academics
and the affected families have so many questions, but no
one will see doctor new Bauer's research results anytime soon.
Yale has all of his papers locked in a vault
until twenty six six, long after everyone involved in the
study will no longer be living, and new Bauer died

(25:04):
in two thousand eight. His study remains controversial. American shadows
is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by
Michelle Muto, researched by Ali steed and produced by Miranda
Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex

(25:25):
Williams and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
visit grim and mild dot com. From more podcasts from
IHEART radio. visit the IHEART radio APP, apple podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts.