The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption [Hardcover]

Barbara Bisantz Raymond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 2007

For almost three decades, renowned baby-seller Georgia Tann ran a children's home in Memphis, Tennessee — selling her charges to wealthy clients nationwide, Joan Crawford among them. Part social history, part detective story, part expose, The Baby Thief is a riveting investigative narrative that explores themes that continue to reverberate today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. An episode in American adoption history little remembered by the public at large, the crimes of nationally-lauded Memphis orphanage director Georgia Tann are skillfully and passionately recounted by freelance writer Raymond, herself an adoptive mom. The portrait of Tann that emerges is a domineering, indefatigable figure with an insane commitment to ends-justify-the-means logic, who oversaw three decades of baby-stealing, baby-selling and unprecedented neglect. Meanwhile, she did more to popularize, commercialize and influence adoption in America than anyone before her. Tann operated carte blanche under corrupt Mayor Edward Hull Crump from the 1920s to the '50s, employing a nefarious network of judges, attorneys, social workers and politicos, whom she sometimes bribed with "free" babies; her clients included the rich, the famous and the entirely unfit (who more than occasionally returned their disappointing children for a refund). "Spotters" located babies and young children ripe for abduction-from women too uneducated or exhausted to fight back-and Tann made standard practice of altering birth certificates and secreting away adoption records to attract buyers and cover her tracks-self-serving moves that have become standard practice in modern adoption. A riveting array of interviews with Tann's former charges reveals adults still struggling with their adoption ordeal, childhood memories stacked with sexual abuse, torture and confusion. Raymond's dogged investigation makes a strong case for "ridding adoptions of lies and secrets," warning that "until we do, Tann and her imitators will continue to corrupt adoption." A rigorous, fascinating, page-turning tale, this important book is not for the timorous.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Barbara Raymond has written extensively for Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook, McCall’s, Parents, Reader’s Digest, Working Mother, Writer’s Digest, and USA Today. She contributed to The Handbook of Magazine Article Writing (Writer’s Digest Books), and was an author of a Good Housekeeping Child Care section that won the National Magazine Award for Public Service. She has been nominated for a National Magazine Award in Reporting and received two awards for feature writing from Women in Communications.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (April 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786719443
• ISBN-13: 978-0786719440
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #961,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greed, corruption, and the sealed adoption records system, April 12, 2007

By 

Marley Greiner (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption (Hardcover)

The Baby Thief : the Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisanz Raymond will hit the stands soon. And oh what a book it is!

I've known about this book and its various incarnations for a long time. In 2001 Barbara sent me an early draft. Unfortunately, I didn't follow up on it like I should have. I am happy to say, though, that Barbara did, and the result is a fascinating but sickening account of how adoption got to where it is today.

For those of you who aren't familiar to Georgia Tann, she was a baby thief who worked her evil with the full knowledge of courts, social workers, and politicians. Between 1924 and 1950 she arranged 5000 "adoptions"--many of them of children she'd kidnapped or obtained by other illegal or unethical means. Tann stole from the poor to sell to the rich. Sometimes she just gave babies away to the child-hungry denizens of Tennessee's power structure, all too happy to turn their backs on justice in order to fill their nurseries with undocumented children to call their own. As part of Boss Crump's Memphis machine Tann's political influence in Tennessee was immense and unheard of for a woman, even now.

Raymond argues that Georgia Tann invented, popularized and commercialized adoption as we know it today with its secret closed and codified system of identity erasure and falsified birth certificates.

Tann's influence did not end with her death in 1950. It is carried today by the approximate 6 million adopted persons and their birth and adoptive families in the US (and more in Canada) whose records remain sealed by the state.

The Baby Thief an important book that every adoptee rights activist, every first mother activist, and anybody who wants to clean up adoption should read and carry with them to the statehouse. Interest, however, should move beyond AdoptionLand and into the areas of women's studies, GLBT studies, child welfare, true crime, and Southern and localized history.

I urge anyone who believes in identity and adoptee rights, and about ethical adoption to read this book. You won't regret it!

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Baby Thief Stole Identities of Many Not Yet Born, April 13, 2007

By 

Mary M. Mason - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption (Hardcover)

The Baby Thief is both a mystery novel and a historical chronicle of 5000 wrongful adoptions. It is more than an exposé of bygone crimes committed by the notorious Georgia Tann. Throughout the book, the author weaves the stories of those who lost one another; children who remembered being wrenched from their mothers; siblings separated and meted out like puppies; mothers and fathers who searched until their deaths for the children they had lost. In order to cover her heinous crimes, Tann issued false certificates portraying adoptive parents as having given birth to the child they adopted. The practice caught on so that in almost all states today, adoptees even as adults cannot get their original birth certificates. Tann's legacy of introducing sealed birth certificates has resulted in generational harm for countless adopted adults who will never know who they are.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Didn't Believe All She Did Until I Read This Book, August 8, 2007

By 

William Jones "L.B." (Nashville Tn) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption (Hardcover)

My wife was put up for adoption throught Georgia Tann's Children's Home. She has told me some of her experiences from being in the home in the 1940's but I just didn't believe all that I heard from her and others until I read the book. I could not read but just a few pages at a time due to the impact this book made on me. I bought my wife another book for her to read while I read this one. We both would go to bed very disturbed each night after reading the books. I would never have believed anyone could do such things to children such as Ms. Tann did and get away with it. What is amazing is all the other people in high positions in government who also got away with helping her with her twisted ideas. One of my surprises was the participation by Evangelist Pat Robertson with his misguided ideas toward adopted children. Fortunately he and his team of lawyers didn't prevail and adoption laws were changed for the good in Tennessee. It's about time that someone exposed what adopted children go through at no fault of their own. I hope this book gets great exposure all over the world because this kind of thing is still going on today in other countries. I only wish this book was written 50 years ago.