Part One: The Woman Who Invented Adoption (By Stealing Thousands of Babies)

In Episode 58, Robert is joined by Sofiya Alexandra to discuss George Tann, an abusive child molester who stole five thousand babies from poor parents to sell to the wealthy.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M what's hanging my overs? I'm Robert Evans, host of
Behind the Bastards podcast, where Sophie shakes her head disappointedly
at me, but it's accurate. I'm I'm hungover for this
episode as well. Uh. We talked about bad people, worse people,
all of history, everything you don't know about him. My
guest for this episode is Sophia Alexandra Comedian, host of

(00:23):
The Private Parts Unknown podcast and anything else I should,
I should, I should toss in that. I mean just genius, genius,
multi hyphen it multi. Yeah. I will notarize document. It's excellent.
I love having things notarized, you know, I love pretending

(00:44):
to them. Well, have you ever heard of a lady
named Georgia Tan? No? Have you ever heard of a
thing called adoption? No? How do you pronounce that? I
have been saying adoption? Adoption? Uh, Georgia Tan invented adoption? Um, yeah,

(01:05):
it seems like a great thing, right, how can you
invent adoption? Well we'll be getting into that a little bit.
But it's not always something that people have done, you know.
But you're telling me people weren't like, oh, I'm going
to raise this baby. Yeah, but they didn't like it
wasn't like a process of adoption. Like, yeah, you're saying
that she founded an agency, she founded the she built

(01:25):
the modern structure through which we adopted children. Kind of,
it isn't. It isn't. We'll get into a little bit.
It used to be a thing that people didn't I
think was a good idea, um for some reasons, which
we'll discuss, taking other people's babies. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't
like that idea. They thought it was a bad idea,
partly because of eugenics, because like they were like, if

(01:47):
you're if you're, if your mom, you know, was dumb
enough to die, h, then you're going to grow into
a stupid person. And like we don't. We don't want to.
We want smart people raising stupid babies. That's just that's
just bad dad stuff. Yeah. I mean everybody was racist
in the past, uh and terrible, but just in just
in the past. Thank god we got over that Shipah.

(02:07):
I know, what a beautiful world we live in. What
a wonderful place now. I do want to note up
top that we're not in the habit of giving like
trigger warnings and stuff on the show, because it's show
about the worst people in history, and we talked about
like genocide every third episode, and like you kind of
know what you're getting into with the show called Behind
the Bastards, but there's gonna be a lot of talk
about child death and molestation in this one. Uh So,

(02:30):
heads up, everybody, it's I'm so glad this is the episode.
Thanks for coming on, Sophia. I was like, my brand
should get more edgy. This might be the darkest one
we do. I welcome the challenge. She's pretty good. I
am the night. Yeah, we are all the night. Yeah. Now.
In eight Europe was convulsed by a series of violent revolutions,

(02:54):
many of which threatened up in the centuries old order
and reigning what the elites at least considered to be
an era of unspeakable k us. The United States did
not experience this wave of revolutions, of course, but many
of our richest assholes watched what was going on in
Europe and got real scared, like they didn't want that
happen in here. I saw a Europe doing a lot
of revolutions and we're like, we don't want none of that.
And the socialism thing looks real scary. Let's make sure

(03:15):
that doesn't happen. So one of these guys was a
dude named Charles Loring Brace. Charles was a Protestant minister,
and he founded the Children's Aid Society of New York
in eighteen fifty three and started the first American orphan trains.
Have you heard of the orphan trains? Neither had I
before I started researching this like an amazing Disneyland ride.

(03:36):
It does. It sounds like a Disneyland ride, but it
actually reads like a particularly dark Charles Dickens book. Okay, yeah, yeah.
So the purpose of these trains was to transport abandoned
children from the city's, particularly New York, into the and
UH and take them into the newly colonized American West.
So at the time, Charles wrote, quote, there are thousands
upon thousands in New York who have no assignable home

(03:58):
and flirt from attic to add in seller to seller. Moreover,
the cultivators of our soil in America are the most
solid and intelligent class. So Charles was concerned because most
of these orphans were the children of immigrants. He wanted
them exposed to what he called the civilizing influences of
American life, so that they would not grow into socialist revolutionaries.
So he saw all these kids hanging out in like

(04:19):
New York and stuff, and was like, these kids are
going to grow up to be like scruffy bearded socialists
and they're gonna they're gonna overthrow like society. And it
was just envisioning like Williamsburg, Yeah exactly, And he's like,
no hipsters here, I don't want Let's bust them out
to California, the least hip place. It was actually a
lot more like Ohio at that point. Um like like

(04:40):
like we weren't we weren't that far west with most
of our expansion yet. I was just making a joke. Sorry,
So I thought this was a fun podcast. Now I'm
the bastard. You are, You're the main bastard that is
kind every bastard as a woman who's just trying to
make a joke. I love that listeners couldn't see because

(05:05):
this is an audio medium. But as soon as when
I said I was the real bastard, Sophie started very
enthusiastically pumping her fist like it was the end of
Breakfast Club. Yeah, yeah, I am, I am the monster.

(05:25):
At the end of the the series, the last episode
is just going to be about me. It's a pretty
great reveal. I mean, you've seen me throwing pens like
you know how how how terrible I can be when
the mics are off terrible at throwing. Sure, hey just
threw another pin. Yeah one pen left you better? Yeah,
but you better wait for the most appropriate moment. There's

(05:46):
other throwables. I could throw those dog treats. Oh no,
don't do that. The dogs shouldn't suffer. Sophie looks very
angry when I talk about throwing her face is one
of do not joke about the treats. Not joke about
the dog treats, Lesson learned. So Charles Brace was concerned
because there were a lot of orphans and he thought
they were going to grow up into gruffy, bearded socialists,
so he wanted to send them out to farms in

(06:07):
order to get them civilized. From eighteen fifty four to
nineteen twenty nine, roughly two dred thousand children were sent
west from New York to the countryside. And on paper,
it doesn't seem like it was necessarily a terrible thing, right,
you know, you got all these kids, they don't have parents,
send them out west that can live on a nice farm,
get that clean farm air, you know, could be could
be a good idea to be separated from the only

(06:29):
stuff and people they've ever known. Well, yeah, that part's
pretty dark. It actually gets a lot darker. Um so
most Americans. Part part of what made it dark is
that most Americans at this point hated the ship out
of foreign born immigrants. And like a lot of these
kids were like Italian and German. Thank god we grew
out of that. Now it's all just white, but at

(06:51):
that point it wasn't. And so like a lot of
these parents who would have been from like Anglo stock
would look at like a German kid and be like,
that's not a white kid. Like, so I don't have
to treat him like he's like my son or anything.
I can just use him as, you know, like a mule,
like like the same thing you'd use like a draft
horse for um. So, a lot of the families were

(07:11):
willing to take kids off the orphan train, but they
weren't willing to raise them as their own. It was
much more common to treat them as free labor. So
the orphan train was not quite child slavery, but it
wasn't super far from child slavery either, and it was.
It was basically child slavery. Um So I'm gonna quote
from a Chicago Tribune article on the subject. Quote. In

(07:31):
eighteen eighty eight, the New York Juvenile Asylum distributed flyers
announcing that it was bringing a group of children ranging
from seven to fifteen years old to Rockford on September six.
They may be taken at first upon trial for four weeks,
and afterwards, if all parties are satisfied. Under indenture, girls
until eighteen and boys until twenty one years of age

(07:53):
place to have a vagina like once every thousand times
in history. You don't have to be a farm slave
as long. If you're late, like sure will be raped,
but it ends at eighteen. Oh god, yeah, you're right.
They all got yeah the past. I mean you wanted
me to come on in the darkness, right up. Yeah.

(08:15):
Marguerite Thompson was one of those little kids. She later
recalled to to the Tribune a scene that does seem
early reminiscent of a slave auction. Quote, their skinny muscles
being poked and squeezed on the station platforms before they
were taken in by families who wanted a little more
than farm hands and showed them little affection. So like
they would literally train these kids over to like some
town in the Middlewest and like set up an like

(08:36):
like put them up on like a block and like,
look at this one's muscles. This kid will push a
whole real good. This kid would be good at farming.
Like pick up these kids. They're yours until they're eighteen
or twenty one. Like, yeah, it was an indicen sure,
but black people didn't even get out at eighteen or No.
It's certainly not that bad, not nearly that bad. Um,
but it happened until nine, which was kind of shocking

(08:58):
to me that like, up until like when my grandpa
was a kid, they were sending kids west on trains
and making them in dentured servants until the age of eighteen.
It's gross. Uh. Thompson was taken in by a Nebraska
family at age six and made to wash dishes by
a foster mother who she said never gave her so
much as a glass of milk. All she got for
me was to work. I never got any love in

(09:20):
that home. So it was like an indentured child labor trains.
This is how kids were treated in up until the
nineteen twenties. And he really gives a dark meaning to
I choo choose you, right, Oh oh yeah, I choose
to choose you to get kicked in the head by
a mule trying to trying to tell my my farmland

(09:41):
and buried in the back ten. Yeah, that probably happened
a lot, Probably a lot of little kids buried on
a lot of little farms out in the Midwest. And
the orphan trains weren't even the worst case scenario for
parents children In New York City. Most abandoned babies were
just found dead by the cops. The ones who survived
were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where, according to Barbara Raymond quote,

(10:02):
they were randomly assigned religions and names. An infant found
in an alley would be named Charlie Alley. A girl
found under a cherry tree near a hill would become
Cherry Hill. Infants whose discovery coincided with a sensational murder
trial were named after the victims, witnesses, or perpetrators. The
abandoned children were cared for by prisoners, and if they
were named after a perpetrator, that is so funny, just

(10:23):
because like there's a famous murder in the newspaper and
you find in a band like it would be little
Charlie Manson, a little little Charlie Manson. Thank you, so
bizarre weird thing to do. I love that you skipped
over that, Like that wasn't the weirdest part of the
whole thing. Randomly assigning religions is pretty weird. But isn't
everybody Christian at that point or Protestant or whatever. Theo's

(10:44):
Jewish people too, but like, like just the idea that,
like you randomly being like Protestant for you, Catholic for you,
like you look like you'd be. I'm more disturbed by
the yeah, I mean yeah. And also naming a girl
Cherry Hill. It's like that's the earliest stripper name, right, Yeah,
there's not a lot of professions after that. Charlie Ali

(11:07):
has a lot of options, Charlie. I'm sorry, Charlie Ali
is going to grow up to be a card shark
and Charlie Ali Ali sounds like it could be anything. Honestly,
he could be Charlie Alie could be an actor. Charlie Ali. Yeah,
I mean it does one thing. I'm excited for when
this drops is all the people on Twitter with last
names that are Hill and Ali realizing like with their

(11:29):
family came from somebody, somebody found your uncle in a ditch.
I mean maybe or they just had that last name. Listener,
don't don't step off that ledge. Good Mr Hill, You're fine, Yeah,
but Mr Manson bad news. So children's asylums, uh is

(11:51):
where most of these kids who survived wound up, and
they were not safe places. The infant mortality rate at
children's asylums averaged about oh my god, oh my god.
Half the kids died in the good ones, oh my god.
The bad ones like New York's Randall Island infant mortality
rate was what You're just sending babies off to the

(12:14):
who is working at this fucking A lot of them
are prisoners. Oh so they don't give a ship. No,
Like a lot of them are like violent criminals and
stuff who are like, well you, we gotta do something
with you. Let's have you take care of babies. What's
kind of the point of building to people didn't care
about babies back Like a lot of it's probably that

(12:35):
like so many babies died like just because like you
don't have vaccine, you don't have like antibiotics and stuff like.
So infant mortality is a lot higher, but like, but
it's not a hundred percent. It's not unless you're at
Randall's Eye. Oh my god, how do you tell a
kid they're going to Randall Island and them not flip
the funk out because they know everyone just dies there? Well,
these are infants. Older kids didn't have a hundred percent

(12:56):
mortality rate. But if you're shipping a baby, they're they're
just not going to make it. Man, that's just the
baby death Island. Oh man, So if you live in
Randall's Island, there's probably a lot of baby ghosts hanging
around there. That's crazy. It's pretty funked up right now. Baby.
I feel like they were just out of the boxes

(13:17):
catapults maybe, Like who's who's taking care of a of
a shipment of babies? I mean it doesn't sound like
anyone is. And then they're just probably dying on the
way there. Yeah. I think a lot of them did
die in transport. I think there probably wasn't a lot
of feeding going on. I mean, I can't even picture
a baby train that would be appropriately suited no, every

(13:38):
time it would stop, like the babies would just slide
off the seats. There's no way, there's no way this
could work. Yeah, that's probably where most of that mortality
rate went. I mean, honestly, I'm imagining one person minding
a whole train full of babies because they don't care
about them. And I'm imagining that person being very drunk
because it's like babies on a person. You'll be drinking,

(14:01):
everyone's shipping themselves and crying. Yeah. I would be drinking too,
even if I wasn't going to kill the babies. Yeah, yeah,
we would, which I probably would to get some sleep
if I was a monster. You joke about that, but
that's literally the next thing we're about to talk about.
I'm not joking about that. There's a check Off short
story where there's so, you know, Russian, Russia, I'm Russian,

(14:22):
so Russians hadn't had surfs, you know, for a really
long time, which is just like white people owning white
people and h Then there's a check off short story
about this little girl who's like taking care of a
baby and she's just is exhausted and wants to sleep
because she's essentially you know, a child slave. She's like
rocking the baby and in the end she just wants

(14:44):
some sleep, and she like smothers the baby, not on purpose,
but because she's so like delirious and sucked up. So yeah, definitely,
definitely children got murdered so people could get sleep. And
that's what we're about to talk about next. The baby
be farms. So there were baby farms back then. That's
crazy because babies can't breed, No, no, they cannot, but

(15:08):
a terrible farm, it's a terrible idea for a farm.
Um Like, So what was actually going on is that
like there would there would be houses and apartments where,
you know, since there were so many extra babies and
it was so terrible to send them to asylums, sometimes
the government would pay women to take care of these
babies into like a woman wind up with like a
house full of babies. Now, some of the baby farmers

(15:30):
received regular stipends from the government and just had and
thus had an incentive to take care of the infants
that the government was handing them. But many of them
were given one payment in a single lump sum, so
they had no reason to keep the babies alive, so
they would take the money and then let the baby
starve or just straight up murder the baby, um, and
then get more babies so that they could get more money.
That's why they were called baby farms. So the babies

(15:52):
is what they were processing, essentially for money. Um. This
was illegal to kill the babies because you weren't kind
of get any more money out of them, but it
was that illegal. U In one baby farmer was convicted
of killing at least fifty three babies. Yeah, those are
some serious numbers, a lot of babies. You're putting up
some stats on the board. Fifty three that's like a

(16:14):
basketball score, dude. Yeah, messed around and got a triple double. Yeah.
You want to guess what her sentence was for fifty
three baby murders? Nothing? Three to seven years. Okay, well,
I guess I'm glad she got something I expected. I
expected them to just be like, yeah, get out of
get out of here, you scamp. Yeah, have another couple
of babies on the way out. There are just just

(16:35):
a complementary baby on the way up there the hallways,
nothing but babies to grab of them. Oh boy, this
is the America that Blula George Tan was born into
On July. Bula Bulah. I keep saying, wanting to say Blulah,
but it's b e u l a h. I think

(16:59):
you Bula seems right. It's one of what all of
the versions we've just said, pretty good names, pretty good names.
But she went by Georgia. She was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Real different from the Philadelphia people know who knew that
there were several Philadelphias. People really had a lot of
hope for the concept of brotherly love. Back in the
baby killing days. Take the hand of your brother, take

(17:22):
the hand of your sister, and then let's murder something.
Let's kill some fucking babies. It's the eighteen nineties. Uh.
George's father was George Clark Tan, who was a local judge.
Her mother was also named Bulah, Isabel Tan and Barbara Raymond,
the author of a book called The Baby Thief, visited Hickory,
which is the town where Georgia grew up, and talked
to some of the older folks who had known her

(17:43):
family at the time. She was told quote Georgia's mother
was the most respected woman in Hickory. Her daddy was
a federal court judge. The Tan home was the second
one built in town. There were no streets then, only
passed through the woods. So this is kind of the
world that Georgia Tan is grown into. Is this important
for the baby murders? Oh? Yeah, yeah, the baby murders
are important for this because it sets up sort of
how babies were treated at the time. And it's good

(18:05):
to have the woods if you're a baby killer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It would turn out to have been handy that she
has the one. What I'm saying, you need the woods
or a lake or something in the woods, or a
lake someplace to the quarry. Yeah. Yeah, Corey would be
really very at least a crack crick. Yeah. George's mother
was from a well off family in Philadelphia. Her father's

(18:25):
family had old Revolutionary War connections and connections to the Confederacy.
Judge Tan was seen as the most educated man in Hickory,
which was not a super high bar in the eighteen nineties,
but whatever. He was infamously arrogant, dominating, and a womanizer
who cheated on his wife and brought daylight as the
biggest man in town. Like he loved nooners. He he
loved afternoon insects. He was in daylight he would not fight,

(18:47):
he would not fuck at night. Couldn't get this guy
to let's let this room up. He was famous for,
like at noon, having his mistresses come by his judge
offices and like for a noonera, which people were like,
I don't know why his wife puts up with it.
She was like, but we live in the oldest, second
oldest house in town. Yeah, second oldest house in town,

(19:08):
which was a good thing then. Yeah. As the biggest
man in town, Judge Tan had a number of different
jobs in his portfolio. One of them was dealing with
all of the orphans in the area. Since this was
the eighteen nineties and early nineteen hundreds and medicine was
mostly a mix of whiskey and uncut heroin, there were
quite a few orphans to go around. Since the orphanages
were constantly low on space, Judge Tan often found himself
sending abandoned children off to workhouses and state insane asylums,

(19:32):
which were even worse than the orphanages of the period.
Oh my god, insane asylums. There's no room for this
baby in the in the in the baby house. Let's
just send him out for a crazy again. They didn't
care that much about little kids at the point, so
not a nice man himself, even judged Tan was kind
of piste off at the injustice of the system, so
he want. Some of George's earliest memories were her dad

(19:53):
being like, sucks that there's nothing to do with these babies,
but send him off to the crazy house or a workhouse,
like h So, yeah, she grew up, you know, seeing
that social problem as a central issue in her life.
She also grew up quite wealthy. Her father wanted to
make her into a high society woman. She later recalled quote,
I was glued on a piano stool at age five,
and I didn't entirely get away from a piano until

(20:14):
I was grown. She hated playing the piano, but she
was hungry for her father's affection and approval. This was
partly for the same reason any child seeks parental approval,
but she also had more mercenary ambitions as well. Young
George's cheap dream in life was to become a lawyer.
Back in the early nineteen hundreds. The way you did
this was by apprenticing to an active attorney. You know,
that's what King Kardashian's doing right now. It is didn't

(20:35):
she help get someone out of like she said or something. Yeah,
it seems but apparently she had worked for months before.
I just read this Vogue article. But they were but
they were saying that, actually, that's how everybody used to
become a lawyer, the apprentice for four years and then
actually that's another way. You can still do it now.
But people choose to do it even though there's another
way now, because a lot of them feel like that's

(20:55):
like a true way to learn the system. That seems
like a better way to learn. This a good idea
almost any job other than like medicine. I mean, you
still do that in medicine after college, you do your residency.
It seems like that how almost every career should be done. Yeah,
it's apprentice, stand up comedian, getting getting the other stand
up comedians liquor and yeah yeah, holding their blueing their

(21:19):
broken dreams back together, taping their drugs to the inside
of their thigh or and the drive over to the venue.
I'm an apprentice comedian, not allowed to joke yet, but
years like, no, they're just letting me do setups. Right now,
I can't I can't write any punch line. Come in
with the punch lines. Oh, speaking of apprentice ships, that's

(21:40):
not a good way to seek into an ad. Uh. Also,
seeing isn't the right way to say segue. This is
a mess. Uh. Sofia helped me out here. How do
we do you like products? Let me tell you something.
One thing that everybody knows about me is I'm a
product head, product head. Haven't a product service head on

(22:01):
top of that service head product head. If your head
is like Sophia's and full products and services, here's some
other products. We're back, good products, solid services. Products better
than the services in my opinion. But you know, it's

(22:23):
different every time it's actually who knows? It might have
been another Koke Brother's ad. Who'm getting a lot of
those randomly? Yeah? What the hell? Who's screening those? Nobody?
The ones that I read are screened, and like we
get to pick them. But like when it's random, it
could be anything, you know, we could be it could
be you're dying defense systems, raytheon ads. How awkward would
it be if there's a baby farm commercial right after

(22:45):
this kill? Some babies get some dollars, more dead babies,
more dollars in your pocket. Yeah, I mean it's nice
work if you can get it'd be better than a
factory for who the baby are you? You as as
the baby murderer, the professional baby? No, yeah, as the murderer.
It's nice to not have a job. It's rather than

(23:08):
the murder and which is more of a hobby. It's
more of a hobby, kind of a calling. Yeah, more
more of a mission, if you will. That's a real
symptom of how like dark life was in the eighteen nineties.
That there's some people like in a cramped apartment, smothering babies,
like looking at other people go into factories and like ships.
I'm not doing that, like covering silver lining. Okay, uh

(23:32):
so yeah. Georgia's cheap dream was to become a lawyer.
She apprenticed with her father. They called it reading law,
and she passed the state bar exam as a young adult,
all in the hope that her dad would let her
work as a lawyer. But, as she later explained, quote,
he wouldn't let me practice because it wasn't the usual
thing for a woman, and I was the only girl
in the family. So he let her learn to be
a lawyer, but he wouldn't actually let her do it,

(23:53):
So instead but how do you prevent a grown ass
woman from doing something? Well, it's there, like losing her
fortune or whatever. I think that was a lot of it.
I think a lot of it would have just been
like social shame that like that, That wouldn't have gone
over well, Um, you know, she's in rural Virginia in
nineteen and I guess I'm just saying I would have

(24:15):
been braver. I wouldn't have. Yeah, most most people weren't.
Some people were, but yeah, uh some. Instead, Georgia measure
in music at Martha Washington College in Abington, Virginia. She
graduated in nineteen thirteen and wound up teaching school in Columbus, Mississippi.
It became clear after a very short span that this
was not her strong suit and not the way she

(24:35):
wanted to spend her life. Since lawyering was close to her,
she gravitated towards the next most interesting career, social work. Now,
Georgia was a lesbian and a stocky, not traditionally feminine
looking woman that could know whoa why did we not
start with the fact that she was a lesbian? Well,
because it's like the best to me as a queer person,
I wish you had told me that. Okay, okay, Well

(24:57):
she's very proud of her lawyer, a lesbian, this is
very good, very empowering. Yeah. And a murderer, a mass
murder and an entrepreneur. Yeah. I mean she is like
she's a she was a powerful woman in an era
where that didn't happen very often. She's definitely like an

(25:19):
impressive figure, but also not on the best way. Um.
But yeah, so she yeah, she was. She was a stocky.
She was like a heavy build and such, and so
she wasn't like a traditionally feminine looking person um, which
was a difficult thing to deal with in nineteen oh
six in particular. Um. So, she did not fit in

(25:41):
well with high society. She didn't like doing the parties
and galas and wearing the dresses and stuff, and so
charity work when she was like a teenager was kind
of she called it her refuge, like during her adolescent years.
Um and it kept her out of parties and stuff.
So like while other girls would be doing like cotillions
and stuff like that, you know, the old South sort
of thing, she would be uh working in poorhouses, volunteering

(26:02):
and stuff. What sounds great, and I think was at
the start, Like, I think she came into this out
of a place of wanting to help people. The genesis
of George's career came when she was an adolescent and
her father got involved in the case of a single
mother who had gotten heavily addicted to the morphine and
her cough syrup. At that point, the penalty for drug
addiction was to be sent to an insane asylum. Because

(26:24):
again it was nineteen oh six, her children were institutionalized
with her. Georgia later recalled to a reporter quote hours later,
the mother cried out something about her baby as the
effects of the dope began to wear off. Officials at
the institution called my father about it. The whole family
had retired, But we got up and drove into the
country and they're under a pile of filthy rags in
a corner of a shack. We found a pitiful baby
which had evidently been given a little bit of dope.

(26:46):
So they found this like a baby that had been
abandoned by this woman who was addicted to the morphine
and her cops syrup, and like pulled it out of
the house. After, like the woman in the asylum, like
realized that she had left her baby behind, So the
hands took the baby back to their house and Georgia
took care of it for a time. It and the
young mother's other kids were eventually sent to an orphanage.

(27:07):
This event seems to have inspired much of George's later career.
A few years later, when Georgia was fifteen, her father
placed two children in the protection of the Mississippi Children's
Home Society. These kids were not orphans, though, as Georgia
later recalled quote, the father was a man of intelligence,
but of a mean disposition that was always getting him
into trouble. The mother was from an ordinary poor family.
The children were sweet, attractive in appearance, and Georgia was

(27:29):
able to use their attractive appearance to basically market the
kids to a wealthy family in town. This rich family
adopted both children. This was the first adoption Georgia arranged
again when she was fifteen years old. Speaking years later
to a reporter, she considered it a huge success. The
girl now has a degree in music. The boys finished
his law degree and begun his practice. Each was given
an opportunity and made the most of it. So there's

(27:50):
some darkness in that story. These kids were not separated
from their parents because their parents were abusive or so
drugged up that they couldn't take care of them. The dad,
you know, was in jail a lot for disorderly conduct
and the mother was poor. Well the dad probably beat them,
I mean yeah, but every I'm going to guess that
was like every family and in town at that point. Sure. Yeah,

(28:11):
but like she she didn't like specifically state that he
was abusive to the kids. She just thought that they
were too poor to have beautiful kids and so sold
the kids to a rich fane where she's wrong. Well yeah,
that's uh. That that that would sort of prove to
be her calling in life, was finding ways to get

(28:31):
poor kids into wealthy families and do they just have
to be beautiful? Yeah, she liked She liked the blonde kids.
Those were the favorite kids. That she couldn't sell a redhead. Well,
I mean who could. Yeah, that's exactly right, Ron Howard. Uh.
Starting at around nineteen, Georgia tan gave up teaching and
began exploding her dad's connections and powers of judge to

(28:54):
start placing children with other families. She worked with the
Kate McWillie Powers Receiving Home for children and Jackson, mississip be.
Initially she did the important work of placing orphaned children
with foster homes, but according to the Baby Thief quote,
she became obsessed with finding adoptive homes for children who
had already had homes. She would acquire these children through
kidnapping or deceit, and if and if she saved them

(29:15):
from anything, it was poverty. Georgia considered poverty the worst
possible condition. It was her upbringing. She was from a
very snobbish family that looked down on people in those
shanty houses who got their hands dirty for a living.
Andrew Bond of Biloxi, Mississippi, told me Georgia felt she
was taking children from trashy people and elevating the children. Now,
that book, The Baby Thief, which is a chilling read
but an excellent piece of journalism, goes into detail about

(29:36):
one of George's very first baby abductions. Quote. One spring morning,
she drove her Model T to a cabin in Jasper County,
near her Hickory hometown. Asleep inside was Rose Harvey, who
was young, poor, widowed and pregnant and suffering from diabetes,
who two year old son Onyx played on the back porch.
Georgia lured the sturdy, black haired, brown eyed boy into
her car. Georgie's father, George C. Tan, signed papers declaring

(29:59):
Rose Harvey and unfit mother and young Onyx an abandoned child.
Onyx was placed with an adoptive family headed by a
man named Rufus Raspberry. Shortly after, I'm sorry, was Rufus
Raspberry a fake person? Someone made up? Because yes, the
answer to that is yet he sounds like he belongs
in like an old fable book from the South, and

(30:20):
young Rufus Raspberry I'm more thinking of like Charlie and
the chocolate factory situation. Yeah, yeah, you got Rufus raspberries
the butt. That's a good reason I would give him
a child. To day, you need to have a child
stolen Fortas Raspberry Jr. Your life. That's amazing, it could

(30:41):
have been your life. Shortly afterwards, she stole on X's
young brother from their mother as well. The mom tried
to get her children back in court, but George's dad
was the judge, and that happened. That's terrible. She's like, well,
let's ask the opinion of this neutral judge. Daddy, Dad judge, dad, Daddy,

(31:01):
what do you think do you think I should get
to steal these babies? That's so fucked up? But also
you said she liked blonde babies. Why did she steal
this this dark haired child? Well, I mean, you know,
you're not going to start with the blonde babies. You
work your way up to them, you know, you that's
that's just the way it goes, you know. Georgie's methods
eventually got her kicked out of Mississippi and then Texas,

(31:23):
but she finally thank god. I was like, isn't I
don't think anybody cares about this. It's one of those things.
Were like, if you're getting kicked out of Texas and
like nineteen fifteen for not treating children properly, you it's
probably pretty bad. Ye, Like it's Texas man. Yeah. Anyway,

(31:44):
she finally found her forever home in Memphis, Tennessee, where
she became the executive director of the Tennessee Children's Home Society.
She got right to work, matching orphaned kids with new parents,
but also abducting poor kids to sell to rich parents.
It turned it turned out there was a lot of
money and selling the right kinds of babies to the
right people. Now, I should note at this point that
it convincing people to adopt babies at all was something

(32:05):
of a coup for Georgia. When I said she basically
invented modern American adoption. This is what I'm getting at.
In the early nineteen twenties, it was not a thing
people did thanks to the then popular science of eugenics.
According to the Adoption History Project, quote Henry Herbert Goddard,
a national authority on feeble minded children, insisted that compassion
for needy children was shortsighted because adoption was a crime

(32:27):
against those yet unborn. The eugenic threat adoption posed, according
to Goddard, was directly tied to illegitimacy. Unmarried mothers were
likely to be feeble minded themselves and have feeble minded
children whose adoptions would contaminate the gene pool by reproducing
future generations of defectives. Godard advocated segregating these children and
adults in benevolent institutions where their dangerous sexuality could be contained. Yeah,

(32:50):
dangerous sexuality. That's the name of my next album. That
is a good album name. That's a really good album name.
Should see the cover. Also baby farm. It's just nipples,
just nipples. The concerns even common people had about adoption
are embodied by this nineteen letter one couple sent to
the US Children's Bureau when they were considering an adoption quote,

(33:13):
we are very anxious to adopt a baby, but would
like to get one that we know about its parentage.
Are there any homes or orphanages where a person can
find out whether there is insanity, fits, or other hereditary
diseases in its ancestors. We would like to have one
from Christian parentage. So even people who are open to
adopting at this period of time are really concerned about it,
and it's not something that really happened very often. When

(33:34):
Georgia started her business in nineteen four, the Boston Children's
Aid Society, which is one of the largest such organizations
in the US, arranged roughly five adoptions a year. In
nineteen Georgia Tan arranged two hundred six adoptions in Memphis alone. So,
according to the baby Thief quote, she developed both her
business and the institution of adoption by doing something unprecedented,

(33:55):
making homeless children acceptable, even irresistible to childless couples. She
com cover on sprinkles ears the stable. What does that
even mean? Well, she accomplished this by insisting, when most
child placement workers apologize for the unworthiness of adoptable babies,
that they were neither children of sin nor genetically flawed.
They are, she said, repeatedly, blank slates. They are born untainted,
and if you adopt them at an early age and

(34:16):
surround them with beauty and culture, they will become anything
you wish them to be. So it's kind of she's
kind of a mixed bag, because that's a good thing
to convince people when they think that, like, well, no,
if a baby's mom is dumb, the baby's gonna While
she's saying that cool ship, she's like literally taking a baby,
like putting it in her She literally stole a baby

(34:38):
with ice cream once by like luring it into her
car with ice cream. That wasn't too far off when
I said irresistible with sprinkles, Right, it's kind of scary
how close you are? Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, Georgie's babies
also came with a guarantee of satisfaction or you could
return it within thirty days. Yeah. Actually, oh my god,
she not only she not only invented adoption, but she

(35:02):
invented the return policy. Insane quote of our children turn
out on average better than one hundred children raised in
their families of birth. The reason is that ours is
a selective process. We select the child and we select
the home. Now, Georgie's adoptions were approved by judges. Of course,
it was not unheard of for some of these judges

(35:22):
to approve more than a dozen per day as George's
business took off. Georgia's favorite judge was Camille Kelly, a
juvenile court judge. In the guise of advising parents on
how to deal with unemployment or divorce, Kelly would in
their parental rights and transfer custody of their kids over
to Georgia. Fully of the children Georgia placed were given
to her by Justice Kelly. So parents would come in
being like, we just lost their job and like we

(35:44):
need to, you know, get benefits or something like that,
and she'd be like, Okay, you gotta fill out this
paperwork and then surprised the paperwork was given up your
rights to your kids. Oh my god. That's like when
they have you know, and like sitcoms or something, they
have you sign a paper and then they like take
the top layer off and they're like, ha ha, you
just sign the family farm away or whatever. But in
this case, it was your baby. Yeah, they didn't want

(36:05):
your farm. She's smart. Yeah. Mary Long was one of
her victims. When she was fifteen, she lived on a
farm with three sisters, a brother, and her mother, who
was dying of cancer. Their mother asked the state welfare
department to take her children temporarily while she waited for
her relatives to arrive in town and to take them instead,
the welfare worker took them to Kelly's juvenile courtroom. Kelly

(36:25):
turned the kids over to Georgia Tan. Mary later recalled
meeting Georgia quote, she had a tight lipped, hatchet face,
she was hateful looking mean. Judge Kelly promised to send
them all to an orphanage for safekeeping, and she mostly
did that, but Georgia Tan wanted Mary's youngest sister, five
year old Christine. When they arrived at the orphanage, Mary's
young sister was abducted and pulled into Georgia Tan's waiting limousine. Bessie, Bessie,

(36:48):
Bessie Bessie. I can still hear her screams. I begged
the nuns at St. Peter's to tell me what had happened.
Finally one said Georgia Tan had flown Christine out of
the state to be adopted. Son didn't want The older
ones just took their young sister and was like, as
the only kid I need. You need to stick the
rest with the nuns. Who gives a fuck? Georgia was
only but I gotta say, if you're getting abducted into

(37:08):
a limo, kind of best gay scenario adoption? Yeah, most people,
I mean abduction of mostly just put you in a van. Yeah,
it is better than a van. You know, you're getting
put in that nice car. I'm just here for the
silver lining. It's all about that silver lining. Speaking of
silver linings, it's time for another ad break, and the
silver linings of these ads is that none of them

(37:31):
will be about babies getting stolen or murdered. Beautiful, beautiful products.
We're back. Georgia was only able to get away with
any of her crimes due to the shocking and total
collision of the local government in Memphis. Some of this
was due to bribery of the traditional sort, but much

(37:52):
of it was due to George's ability to secure children
for their wealthy and powerful people in town. When one
member of the Tennessee State Legislature's grandchild was delivered stillborn,
Georgia tan stole and procured a new infant for his
daughter the very same day. The baby was handed over
to the legislator's daughter while she was still innesthetized from
giving birth. She never even knew her original baby had died.

(38:12):
Holy fun, you need a baby today, I get you
a fucking baby. Like I'll find you a damn baby.
I mean she she also invented that like thirty minutes
or less pizza guarantee. Yeah, she kind of invented like
Amazon's whole policy of same day delivered Prime membership baby delivery.
You know Jeff Bezos, now that we've said it, our
phones have sent him that, and he's like he's already,

(38:33):
he's already, Like we've been working on this for months.
Lay to ruin it. The problem is getting drones that
won't fall out of the guy with a baby in
and we've lost a lot of babies that way. Oh,
we have fun. By Georgia had gotten so good at
stealing babies that she just had too damn many of them,
more than she could place using her usual methods. I mean,

(38:53):
that's such a classic baby abduction problem. After a while,
you're just like, there's too many baby too. May I
stole too many damn babies. Yeah, it's we've we've all
been there and some babies on layaway. Got to give
some away, put some in one of the baby farms,
just so you can get rid of the excess cinema
over that island in New York where all the baby's day. Oh,

(39:13):
so many options, so many options. She brought up this
surplus baby problem to her friend at a Guilty, a
reporter with the Memphis Press Scimitar. The holiday season was
approaching and Anna needed a bevy of space filling, heartwarming
Christmas content. The two hit upon the idea of solving
both of their issues by using the space to advertise
Georgia's babies. One of George's ads was just a picture
of several babies under the header want a real life

(39:36):
Christmas Present? Oh my god, it's like getting a puppy. Yeah,
that's exactly how it sounds. I'm going to read you
some of the copy from that real life Christmas present.
Baby could write that all right, what's your what's your guess? Okay,
do you want to have a true Christmas experience? Do
you want to experience with marry experience when she had Jesus? Well,

(39:59):
I have some top notch, a hundred percent blank slate
beautiful babies that are going to churn out to be
anything you want them to be. Do you want to
have the happiest little bundle under your Christmas tree? Come
to Georgia's babies. Babies? Uh, yeah, that's that's not super

(40:24):
far off. I wasn't trying to be funny. I was
just trying to nail it. You nailed it. Yeah, So
that they add read want of real life Christmas present? Well,
here's your chance for children raging an age from three
months the seven years will be presented it to as
many lucky families Christmas Eve. The press Simitar is making
special arrangements with Miss Georgia Tan to place these babies.
A December featuring a picture of two adorable babies said this,

(40:48):
see if you can pick out the boy in the picture. No,
you missed, it's the other one that Curtly had on
the right, and his playmate on the left is the girl.
She is eight months and the little boy is one
year old. They have golden hair, blue eyes, and good dispositions.
Apple cation should be sent to the press. Scimitar adoption
editor say, whether you want a boy or girl? Brunette,
blonde haired or redhead. Blonds, by the way, are in
the majority. Oh my god, she's gotten better at stealing

(41:10):
the blonde babies by that point. She's like, I know
what the market needs, I know what people want, and
they want they want blonde babies. Like yeah. The ads
were an instant, staggering hit the newspapers. Adoption editor, which
is not a thing that ought to exist, received dozens
of calls that very day. Georgia ran different ads with
different babies every day that December. She called them Christmas

(41:30):
babies living dolls, and advised readers to put your orders
in early. You want to get that baby before Christmas?
Yeah you don't want to. Also, like be the one
person who didn't get a baby. Yeah, you don't want
Your friends are gonna make fun of you. Oh, you
didn't get the baby for Christmas? Loser the hot Christmas gift.
It's a literal baby. Yeah. Uh. The ads also took
on a unsettling air like even more than sort of

(41:54):
the commercializing of babies. There's one ad from November nineteen
thirty that described a five year old girl this way
a solemn little trick with big brown eyes matches five
years old and awful lonesome. What why is she a trick?
I don't know. My only hope is that it meant
something less like risqu nineteen thirty Yeah, like she they're

(42:16):
trying to be like she's ready to fuck. She's five?
Why why? I don't know. I don't know. I mean,
although we'll be talking about George's love of molesting babies later,
that might have been a part of it. It's fucked up.
I said this was going to be like Yeah. December

(42:38):
nineteen thirty five ad for a five year old boy
was titled yours for the Asking and read how would
you like to have this handsome boy 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. Jesus. Yeah,
this is nineteen thirty five, Like we're not, that's not

(42:59):
that far in the past. Like they have planes that
can go across continents World War two. It's crazy. The
Christmas ads were so successful that Georgia usually sold out
of babies. This provided her with an ever growing imagine
that she's running that ad and then on top of
it is that big sold out like stamp that they
do no more baby, I'm gonna go drive into the

(43:21):
poor part of town and pick some up, but like
you know, you gotta give me like four hours to
grab the next wave. Fu dude. The ads provided her
with an ever growing list of future clients who she
could abduct children for and market too directly. The Christmas
baby stories were also a wild success from a content standpoint.
They became the newspapers most popular articles in a rampant
source of discussion for the people of Memphis. According to

(43:42):
the baby Thief quote, would the child be dressed in
lace or simply a diaper? Or as was Master Paul
advertised On December fourteenth of that first year, nothing at all.
Our photographer caught the young gentleman a la nude, but
he wasn't the least bit perturbed. He is seven months
old and blonde, like oh my god, elderly citizen save
their favorite pictures young matrons. Bridge parties were enlivened by

(44:03):
spirited but friendly arguments over whether Baby Bonnie was cuter
than Master Paul. George's ads made adoption a household word
in the region, and adoptable children their faces illuminating the
newspapers that shared table space with readers, coffee cups and
jam pots began to seem part of their family. I
really like that the jam pods worms. You want to
make sure you knew people were having jam at the time.

(44:26):
It was big. I mean, it's one of those things.
So like this is again part of like the complexity
of it is because like back before Georgia Tan started
her work, it was considered like shameful to it to
consider adopting a kid, because like you don't know where
it's going to come from. You're you know, you're making
you know, you're essentially like letting this lower class person
infiltrate a good family. And she ends that stigma by

(44:46):
making everybody just kind of baby crazy. But she's also
doing it by turning babies into a commodity. Uh So,
two babies for the Priza, onebies for one day, throwing
a red head full free, Yeah, redheads half off you know,
you take a blonde, get a free redhead, Well, get
some colds cash for the future baby. You don't even

(45:09):
have to keep the redheads alive. You can smother them.
This is the thirties. Eventually, other newspapers started running Georgia
Tan's baby ads too. By ninety five, Georgia Tan had
placed children with parents in all forty eight United States,
along with four other countries. Thanks to the ads and
the growing success of George's business, she started to get
a little bit famous. This brought more applicants to her,

(45:30):
for which she had to find more babies. It also
made her rich, and this is probably where she should
we should talk about just how Georgia Tan monetized adoption.
So according to the baby thief quote, she didn't openly
affixed price tags to children, but instead charged fees for
transporting them to their new homes. Georgia directed prospective adoptive
parents to make their checks out to her, not to
the Tennessee Children's Home Society, and to send them to

(45:51):
her private post office box in Memphis. These fees included
travel expenses for a worker and the baby to be adopted.
And we're doing three installments, she charged California said it's
a hundred and sixty eight dollars for the first visit.
In New York City residents two hundred and twenty eight
dollars and eighty one cents. Adoptive parents and other areas
were charged fees somewhat between these figures. The next installment
of George's fee was du upon the delivery of the child.

(46:12):
Georgia enjoyed handing babies too happy excited couples, and she
often made this trip herself. California residents were charged three
hundred and sixty dollars. New Yorkers paid two hundred and
sixty eight dollars and eighty one cents. Now, there were
no calls New Yorkers pay more for the first installment
but less for the second. I don't know. It's probably
just because she wanted the money. It doesn't make sense. Yeah,

(46:32):
it's that's the only thing that bothers me about this. Financials.
Financials worried now there were no qualifications for adopting a
child from Georgia Tan other than that you know, you
have access to money. A former Children's Bureau worker later
told Barbara Raymond quote she placed with no regard to
whether children would be happy in their adoptive homes. It
was hidden miss she was trying to place every child

(46:54):
in Memphis. She wanted to get her hands on every
child she could. Since Georgia Tan didn't actually care about
any of these kids, she regularly made parents wait more
than a year between the second and third trips. This
made it seem to the parents like Georgia really did
carefully scrutinize every placement before approving an adoption. The reality
is that this was all done to justify charging a
shipload of money on the third installment. California residents could

(47:15):
expect to spend a total of seven and thirty one
dollars and forty four cents for a baby. New Yorkers
paid a total of a little over seven hundred and
sixty six dollars In modern terms, that's roughly eleven thousand
dollars per baby, so these are a high dollar item.
Georgia Tans sometimes sold babies for several times that much.
Ultra wealthy couples could be expected to pay as much
as ten thousand dollars in nineteen thirties dollars, which is

(47:37):
roughly a hundred and forty grand today, normally like having
a baby via surrogate, that's about a hundred grand. Yeah,
I think I think it's like, yeah, yeah, that's very expensive. Um.
But adoption is not supposed to be that expensive. And
at the time, normal adoption agencies did not charge anything
except for like fees to cover their basic operating costs. Um.

(47:58):
And so she was working through a state agency, but
she was getting paid personally herself for delivering the babies.
She's a nice racket. If you should make it work,
She's a fucking g uh. Much of George's profits came
from building new couples for her travel expenses. This led
to her increasingly selling her babies to out of state couples.
By the late forties, more than of her stock was

(48:19):
sent out of Tennessee. The more places she sold babies,
and the more babies she sold, the more famous she became,
and the more people reached out to her wanting to
adopt babies of their own. This led to an increasing
series of what missed hand called roundups. Oh god, that's
so dark. Yeah. Round up. Roundups were conducted by groups
of varying sizes that included her and or one or

(48:39):
more of her subordinates. They were accompanied by an ever
changing assortment of Memphians, juvenile court employees, social workers, and
deputy sheriffs. Armed with papers signed by Judge Camille Kelly.
The groups descended upon the apartments, homes, farms, and even
houseboats of poor parents, rounding up their children, looking them over,
and carrying off those Georgia deemed most marketable. The reason
most often cited and Judge Kelly's author isation with that

(49:00):
their parents were providing a poor home environment. Georgia wasn't
required to explain why she often seized only the youngest
members of a sibling group, not all yeah, that's cool,
super cool Georgia. Most of the children she abducted were
babies are toddlers. Usually the cut off was around age five.
When she abducted older children, including teens, it was because

(49:20):
of specific requests she received from different clients. As her
business group, Georgia began stealing children in order to fulfill
specific orders. One example of how this worked is the
story of a thirty one year old widow and mother
of six named Grace Gribble. Now Grace had a social
worker from the Memphis Family Welfare Agency named Sarah Sims
Sarah visited regularly to check in on Grace and her family,

(49:41):
but Sarah was also working with Georgia Tan dun dunn
dun dundone, and one day Sarah showed up with one
of Tan's other employees, a woman named Helen Rose. Sarah
told Grace that she needed to sign six papers that
would guarantee her children free medical care from the state.
This was all a ruse, though the papers were really
forfeitures of parental rights. Once they were signed, Helen told Grace,
I'll take of three youngest children now. Grace started sobbing

(50:02):
while Sarah and Helen took three of her children and
stuffed them into the back of one of Georgia Tan's limousines.
As Grace begged them to stop, Helen coldly explained that
we have an order for a boy at this age
and type. Grace went to the local juvenile court. Someone
ordered your baby, Sorry, someone ordered your baby. I got
I got this order, Like, what do you want me
to do? Not fulfilled baby order? Uh? So Grace went

(50:24):
to the local juvenile court to try and get her
children back. She found Georgia Tan there and asked where
are my babies, to which Georgia replied, they're on their
way to a much better life than you could provide them.
You should thank me. For some reason, Grace was not grateful.
She continued to beg Georgia Tan to not abduct her children.
Georgie advised her forget them now. Unlike most of Georgia's victims,
Grace was eventually able to find a lawyer. They took

(50:45):
her seven months to do this. During this time, her
six year old was given to a family in Florida.
Her three year old was adopted by a doctor in Memphis,
but her four year old was rejected by the couple
who bought him. They sent him back to Memphis on
a train with a dollar in his pocket, but they
had specifically requested specific The questioned him, maybe he's probably
had a dent or something. You know, you want a
fresh baby. Uh. He spent seven years in foster homes

(51:07):
before being adopted again, this time by alcoholics Jesus. Grace
did eventually get a trial, but courts being what they
were in nineteen forty, the issue that interested the court
wasn't where this woman's children stolen from her? It was
does she have as much money as the new parents?
Of her children. In the end, the judge ruled that
the adoptions would be allowed to stand. Grace would not
get her children back. The judge told her, quote, this

(51:28):
is one of the sad tragedies of life that even
a mother must endure for the best interest of her children. Sorry,
the other people have more money. You understand your poor,
Your poor. Think about that. People can't raise mecore. You can't.
You're poor. You can't have several little cores. Yeah, got
to give him away, Gotta give him away. Georgia Tan
was able to get away with so much in part
because she had a tight relationship with the man who

(51:50):
was basically the dictator of Memphis at this point, e h.
Boss Crump. According to The New York Post, that is
also a fake name with what what was it rust
Russell Raspberry? Yeah, not Russell Rufus. That's That's the best
thing to come out of this story, is that a
man named Rufus Raspberry once existed. Yeah, and what is

(52:12):
it Boss Crump? That sounds like a video game boss
that you have to beat at the very end. Everything
was ridiculous in the thirties, like, man, Yeah, it's just
a silly time. According to the New York Post. Quote Crump,
also a transplant in Mississippian, was the sometime mayyor and
leader of that Crumping is named after yes I Hope
so uh. He developed a cozy patronage with Tan. She

(52:33):
paid him off and brought the fame of her society
to Memphis. He in turn protected her from prying investigations,
while city police ignored the complaints of families who had
lost children to Tan and sometimes even helped Tan sees kids.
So the cops got out on it. You need help
stealing babies, Georgia, Yeah, not not a big shocker. Georgia
Tan seemed to see much of what she was doing
as a sort of class war. She believed the poor
were unworthy parents, and that their children were better off

(52:55):
dead if they couldn't grow up wealthy. This had the
benefit for Georgia of making her look outward spotless to
the world. Most of the coverage around here focused on
either the adorable pictures of babies and newspapers, or her
work adopting out babies to the rich and famous. She
provided Joan Crawford with her twin daughters. Are you serious?
I am serious? She provided babies to Latta Turner and
Pearl Buck and Herbert Lehman, the governor of New York.

(53:18):
A number of the children she stole later grew up
to be prominent themselves, including the wrestler Ric Flair. Flair
was stolen as a baby by Georgia Tan. Yeah, Joan
Crawford got her kids from you. We should have led
with this. We buried the lead on this line. I
don't know where Joan Crawford's babies came from. Were stolen

(53:39):
from its, so we don't know where they're really from. No.
One of George's legacies that actually persists to this day
is like in most of the country, it started to change.
The records of like where the child came from our
sealed and like you like in a lot of cases,
you can't find out what you're past. That's yeah, now
you can figure it out at a certain point. It
used to be that it was just destroyed and like

(54:01):
that you had no access to them. They were basically
sealed in most of the country. And that's something Georgia
lobbied for, specifically to make it harder for people to
figure out where she was stealing babies from and stuff. Ye,
I can't believe that the legacies kind of stayed. That's
what I mean when I say she kind of invented
the modern way of adoption, and like a lot of
not all of it's bad, but it all started because
like she was just trying to figure out a better

(54:22):
way to steal and market babies. That's it's fucking wild. Yeah,
And Georgia Tan's business was even darker than it seems
because for Georgia, babies were just products like melons or
bottles of beer or cartons of milk. And with any product,
you're going to have some spoilage, you're breakage to deal with.
In the case of Georgia Tan, that spoilage came in
the form of a shipload of dead babies. But we're

(54:43):
going to talk about all that and so much more
when we come back on Thursday. This is a good
note to end the episode on how you feeling about
Georgia Tan. I mean, I first made up patch of her,
and then I sewed it on my jacket and now
I've torn it off. Yeah, I just feel like my
previous love of her was just you know, yeah, not justified,

(55:07):
not justified. It was you get you get excited because
the lawyer thing and then it was like a lesbian
a lawyer. This is amazing, baby steeler. Oh, this is
taking a dark turn baby murderer even darker. Oh she
molested some of the babies. Okay, I'm gonna head out.
I'm outseas. Uh you want to plug your plug doubles? Sure? Um.

(55:29):
I you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at
the Sophia t h E S O F I y
A and listen to my podcast Private Parts Unknown. We
talked about sex and sexuality and we travel around the world.
Pretty cool. That does sound pretty cool. If you want
to find this podcast on Twitter, Instagram, twin Instagram. Uh,

(55:51):
it's at bastards pod is the is the is the
handle for both. You can find us on the internet
behind the bastards dot com, which is where we'll have
these sources for this uh podcast listed. If you want
to really get deep down into baby murder, there's more
links for you. Bummed the funk out The Baby Thief
is a fine piece of journalism on a super bummer

(56:13):
of a topic. Uh hooray. Um. We have a shirts.
You can buy shirts, you can buy beer cozys. Uh,
you can buy phone cases, you can buy munitions all
branded with behind the bastards any babies, Yes, yeah, we
we do now sell babies. Are you running a special Yeah,

(56:36):
you know what, I am okay to tell us with
the special tubernets for the price of a blonde. Oh
my god, I'm gonna get in on this. Everybody should
get get your baby. You don't want to be the
only person on Easter. Yea, and and and try to
try to text ahead of time because I need to
like have time to drive down to the poor part
of town duct a couple of kids. It goes you
need you need a little bit of lead time. You
need a little bit of lead time to steal some babies.

(56:58):
You know, I only have some much room in the
trunk of the car. I mean, I'll provide the limo.
I'll rent a limo so that you can really steal
in style, the old fashioned way, the old fashioned way,
chucking him in the back of the limo and driving off.
It sounds great. Well, oh yeah, I have a podcast.
It's called it Could Happen Here. It's not as depressing
as this, but it's the title sounds like it probably is.

(57:20):
It's it's pretty depressing. It is pretty depressing. We don't
talk about sheld molestation though, Well, but it could happen here.
I think you are not thinking of like an ice
cream party. It's like negative things, yea of an ice
cream party. What I'm saying, No one's ever like it
could happen here. About something great? Yeah, like a fast
of all, Yeah that could happen here. No, it's it's

(57:43):
a bummer committed depression. You are. That's all I ever
do is sad stuff. That's the end of the episode.