Meet Georgia Tann. She was a social worker who arranged adoptions in Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. She was very successful in placing Memphis orphans with wealthy couples in California and elsewhere, where she could charge 100 times the previous going rate for her services. Tann grew rather rich and made friends among the powerful movers and shakers of Memphis, and so was a respected member of the city's elite. Meanwhile,
From 1924 all the way until 1950, terror stalked the streets of Memphis. Children vanished from porches and playgrounds. Babies were taken right from their cribs. Kids went to the hospital for a routine checkup and all that came back was a death certificate. The city had the highest infant mortality rate in the country, for no reason anyone seemed able to explain. In a horror movie, this would end with a band of plucky kids defeating a guy with a crow mask and a chainsaw for a hand. In reality, the mayhem was all the work of an eminently respectable society lady named Georgia Tann, who ran the Tennessee Children's Home Society.
Tann made a profit from most of the children in her care, but those who were judged less adoptable were neglected, mistreated, and abused. Many of them died. Read the story of Georgia Tann and her long reign of terror at Cracked.
(Image credit: The Commercial Appeal)
