Today's entry comes to you courtesy of the podcast, Criminal. I'll be writing about a real-life supervillain: born and raised in privilege, she was denied one fuckin' thing she wanted, and began a domino cascade that resulted in thousands of people suffering entirely deliberate but completely unnecessary tragedies.
I am, of course, talking about this bitch. (Image found at
FindAGrave.com, because you're damn right I'm happy she's dead.)
Be warned: today's 101IT comes with child abuse, murder, miscarriage of justice on a nigh-industrial scale, no happy ending, and post hoc moral waffling by people who really ought to know better. So buckle up, Buttercup; we're in for a bumpy ride.
She Who Must Not Be Named was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi near the turn of the 20th century, presumably under a blood moon and to the sounds of spooky orchestral music, ominous thunder in the distance, and a chorus of howling wolves. She was the daughter of a judge, who would read law shit to her for bedtime stories, and when she came of age she passed the bar. She was, in fact, the first woman in Mississippi to pass the state bar exam. DO NOT CHEER. But Daddy Dearest forbade her from ever practicing - no daughter of his would be anything but a machine for pumping out babies.
Pound for pound, this is probably the worst single decision ever made, until some sorry sack of crap without the good sense to be precognitive decided that a young German man didn't belong in art school.
On that fateful night, in the pouring rain, backlit by firelight, one fist clenched in defiance, the wronged woman who would become The Stark Lady Beulah George (sounds kinda like "The Dark Lord Voldemort," if you squint with your ears) vowed to herself, "Oh, I'll pump out babies, all right." She was answered by a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder, much closer now than when she was born. Probably. Look, the lightning probably wasn't that close, or that well timed, and she might not have been backlit by fire, and she probably wasn't standing in the rain, if it even was raining in the first place, and it might not have been night, and she probably didn't say that. What I'm saying is, none of that happened, except the part where her judgy judge father, who read the law to her as a child, forbade her from doing the very thing he dangled in front of her. Which, by the way, is exactly the way men became lawyers back in the day. So, misogyny for the lose.
The Stark Lady then became a social worker. And almost definitely a lesbian. Not joking. DO NOT CHEER. Here's a characteristic example of her "social work": she rolled up on a mother's home while she was sleeping, lured her oldest son into her vehicle with a giant candy cane, and drove off. Then she came back for the other one. The mother, Rose Harvey, found that both her children were adopted by the same local family, and she contested the adoption. Being poor, and going up against the daughter of a judge in cahoots with a wealthier family, she lost her case.
While this was a blatantly obvious miscarriage of justice to everyone ever, forward and backward in time, The Stark Lady was more or less run out of town on a rail (less literally, more quietly, possibly with fist-clenching in a pouring thunderstorm). DO NOT CHEER. She moved to Memphis, because things were somehow even worse in Tennessee, where she turned her knack for kidnapping (kid-knacking?) into a thriving business catering to celebrities and the upper crust.
I'm not going to belabor the details. If you want a captivating narrative, go listen to the podcast. It's really very well-done, and I'm more into reachy puns, incongruous gags, and badly-timed coverage. I mean, it's Pride Month, and here I am writing about The Breaker of Families and Mother of Preventable Diseases. But I just realized this right now, so... too late! I'm not sitting on this for a whole 'nother month!
Anyway, over the course of her career, Tann kidnapped thousands of babies from poor families, and sold them to rich families at exorbitant markups (basically Line Item Creep but full of Blatant Lies). She projected a veneer of respectability that concealed a machinery of suffering, fronting a lovely grounds with a rigorous matching process, when in reality the kids were routinely neglected in squalor unto death, and placed willy-nilly with made-up details on forged paperwork. Her employees wore fancy nurse uniforms, but they were seldom trained and often addicts. Plenty of her victims' families knew full well who she was and what she did, but they got nowhere because Tann was well-connected and the cases were regularly thrown out. Plenty of her clients' families knew full well what was going on, and just didn't care (you can find a list of celebrities who are known to have adopted through her human trafficking ring, but I don't want to ruin anyone for you). Her criminal enterprise was so lucrative and sought-after that she was able to employ women who would walk into hospitals disguised as nurses and just walk out with babies, usually blond-haired blue-eyed ones. The most legitimate end of her Spectrum of Schemes (good album name) involved lying to parents just plausibly enough to get the child in-hand, then disappearing them forever. Her personal best was all five kids from the same home - gotta snatch 'em all!
Thousands of families, systematically destroyed. Hundreds of children, dead of preventable illness in the name of profit. Why? Because rich folks wanted kids, and Tann thought poor folks didn't deserve to have them. She never faced charges, never received comeuppance of any kind, and no child was ever restored to their original family's custody. There was one notable reunion after almost 50 years, and no others, because Tann destroyed all the records she could as a matter of course. Then she up & died of cancer just three days before charges were brought against her, completely avoiding prosecution.
Ready for the squickiest part? As a direct result of The Stark Lady's efforts, adoption rates and perceptions in the USA materially improved by a great deal. DO NOT CHEER. I don't mean that a wave of outrage and horror at her crimes sparked a revolution in foster care; far from it. Tann marketed her "merchandise" - her word - as living dolls, chic accessories, and perfect Christmas gifts. She fancied up adoption by using her connections to sell to the rich for all the wrong reasons - the ruling public perception of adoption before The Coming of the Stark Lady was that unwed mothers gave up their kids for adoption, and so the children were therefore of inferior breeding stock and Not Of Concern. Tann saw this perception change in her lifetime, as a direct result of her efforts, and died with a clear conscience thinking she'd been doing the Lord's work her entire life. She made adoption fashionable, gracious, and a mark of status. Today, people talk about this as if it's a wrinkle, as if we couldn't have done it without her, as if she's not still scarier than any monster under your bed.
Genghis Khan murdered, raped, and pillaged his way to unprecedented domination of isolated city-states. Every move he made was in service to his bottom line: merchants carried his cash and his goods along the roads, and it turns out the most cost-effective way to keep that gravy train rolling was to police them regularly; the nomadic culture he came from was shamanistic, so the idea of gods and afterlife was new on him; not wanting to take any chances, he told the people, "Look, do whatever you want, just pray to your god-things for my soul-thing, too." Safe roads and freedom of religion weren't something he worked hard for out of the kindness of his heart; he never once thought, "OK, now that I've consolidated power, I can finally make the roads safe for everyone and let them practice whatever religion they want!" These were unintended byproducts that directly facilitated the maintenance of his empire, and benefited the little people only by accident and at an unconscionable cost. As Dan Carlin argues in his Hardcore History podcast, it's only with centuries of hindsight and at complete emotional remove that we can even consider a "bright side" to his conquest and rule.
Georgia Tann lied, bribed, and kidnapped her way to an utterly dehumanizing human trafficking empire of unconscionable scale that preyed on the children of poor families for personal profit. She cut every corner she could, grifting and socializing her way to an untouchable position where the rich and powerful were on her side so none of her victims had any recourse. She was the goddamned Bogeyman; she was Krampus for parents; she was the faerie who takes your child in the night and doesn't even bother to leave a changeling in its place. This woman did things that we normally attribute to monsters of legend, with a smile on her face and an air of utter authority - and she got away clean. Over half a century after her death, people read this, look at her heartless marketing - literally calling children "merchandise" behind closed doors, and "accessories" & "presents" in goddamn public - and notice that something just happened to change for the better, completely by accident, as a result of her ruthlessly self-serving methods.
Any good that came from Georgia Tann was a complete and total accident. There's no complication, there's no room for nuance, this shouldn't wrinkle your brain. If Beulah George Tann had seen a way to increase her clients' desperation and strengthen her stranglehold on the industry by further stigmatizing adoption and driving it even farther beneath public concern, for even a 1% increase in her ROI, she would've done it in a Thanos snap. She was a daughter of high society who was the first woman in her state to pass the bar, and could have been a 19th century feminist icon; instead, she allowed one fly in her expensive-ass ointment to push her down a greased slide into a life of ruthless crime.
Pound for pound, this is probably the worst single decision ever made, until some sorry sack of crap without the good sense to be precognitive decided that a young German man didn't belong in art school.
On that fateful night, in the pouring rain, backlit by firelight, one fist clenched in defiance, the wronged woman who would become The Stark Lady Beulah George (sounds kinda like "The Dark Lord Voldemort," if you squint with your ears) vowed to herself, "Oh, I'll pump out babies, all right." She was answered by a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder, much closer now than when she was born. Probably. Look, the lightning probably wasn't that close, or that well timed, and she might not have been backlit by fire, and she probably wasn't standing in the rain, if it even was raining in the first place, and it might not have been night, and she probably didn't say that. What I'm saying is, none of that happened, except the part where her judgy judge father, who read the law to her as a child, forbade her from doing the very thing he dangled in front of her. Which, by the way, is exactly the way men became lawyers back in the day. So, misogyny for the lose.
The Stark Lady then became a social worker. And almost definitely a lesbian. Not joking. DO NOT CHEER. Here's a characteristic example of her "social work": she rolled up on a mother's home while she was sleeping, lured her oldest son into her vehicle with a giant candy cane, and drove off. Then she came back for the other one. The mother, Rose Harvey, found that both her children were adopted by the same local family, and she contested the adoption. Being poor, and going up against the daughter of a judge in cahoots with a wealthier family, she lost her case.
While this was a blatantly obvious miscarriage of justice to everyone ever, forward and backward in time, The Stark Lady was more or less run out of town on a rail (less literally, more quietly, possibly with fist-clenching in a pouring thunderstorm). DO NOT CHEER. She moved to Memphis, because things were somehow even worse in Tennessee, where she turned her knack for kidnapping (kid-knacking?) into a thriving business catering to celebrities and the upper crust.
I'm not going to belabor the details. If you want a captivating narrative, go listen to the podcast. It's really very well-done, and I'm more into reachy puns, incongruous gags, and badly-timed coverage. I mean, it's Pride Month, and here I am writing about The Breaker of Families and Mother of Preventable Diseases. But I just realized this right now, so... too late! I'm not sitting on this for a whole 'nother month!
Anyway, over the course of her career, Tann kidnapped thousands of babies from poor families, and sold them to rich families at exorbitant markups (basically Line Item Creep but full of Blatant Lies). She projected a veneer of respectability that concealed a machinery of suffering, fronting a lovely grounds with a rigorous matching process, when in reality the kids were routinely neglected in squalor unto death, and placed willy-nilly with made-up details on forged paperwork. Her employees wore fancy nurse uniforms, but they were seldom trained and often addicts. Plenty of her victims' families knew full well who she was and what she did, but they got nowhere because Tann was well-connected and the cases were regularly thrown out. Plenty of her clients' families knew full well what was going on, and just didn't care (you can find a list of celebrities who are known to have adopted through her human trafficking ring, but I don't want to ruin anyone for you). Her criminal enterprise was so lucrative and sought-after that she was able to employ women who would walk into hospitals disguised as nurses and just walk out with babies, usually blond-haired blue-eyed ones. The most legitimate end of her Spectrum of Schemes (good album name) involved lying to parents just plausibly enough to get the child in-hand, then disappearing them forever. Her personal best was all five kids from the same home - gotta snatch 'em all!
Thousands of families, systematically destroyed. Hundreds of children, dead of preventable illness in the name of profit. Why? Because rich folks wanted kids, and Tann thought poor folks didn't deserve to have them. She never faced charges, never received comeuppance of any kind, and no child was ever restored to their original family's custody. There was one notable reunion after almost 50 years, and no others, because Tann destroyed all the records she could as a matter of course. Then she up & died of cancer just three days before charges were brought against her, completely avoiding prosecution.
Ready for the squickiest part? As a direct result of The Stark Lady's efforts, adoption rates and perceptions in the USA materially improved by a great deal. DO NOT CHEER. I don't mean that a wave of outrage and horror at her crimes sparked a revolution in foster care; far from it. Tann marketed her "merchandise" - her word - as living dolls, chic accessories, and perfect Christmas gifts. She fancied up adoption by using her connections to sell to the rich for all the wrong reasons - the ruling public perception of adoption before The Coming of the Stark Lady was that unwed mothers gave up their kids for adoption, and so the children were therefore of inferior breeding stock and Not Of Concern. Tann saw this perception change in her lifetime, as a direct result of her efforts, and died with a clear conscience thinking she'd been doing the Lord's work her entire life. She made adoption fashionable, gracious, and a mark of status. Today, people talk about this as if it's a wrinkle, as if we couldn't have done it without her, as if she's not still scarier than any monster under your bed.
Genghis Khan murdered, raped, and pillaged his way to unprecedented domination of isolated city-states. Every move he made was in service to his bottom line: merchants carried his cash and his goods along the roads, and it turns out the most cost-effective way to keep that gravy train rolling was to police them regularly; the nomadic culture he came from was shamanistic, so the idea of gods and afterlife was new on him; not wanting to take any chances, he told the people, "Look, do whatever you want, just pray to your god-things for my soul-thing, too." Safe roads and freedom of religion weren't something he worked hard for out of the kindness of his heart; he never once thought, "OK, now that I've consolidated power, I can finally make the roads safe for everyone and let them practice whatever religion they want!" These were unintended byproducts that directly facilitated the maintenance of his empire, and benefited the little people only by accident and at an unconscionable cost. As Dan Carlin argues in his Hardcore History podcast, it's only with centuries of hindsight and at complete emotional remove that we can even consider a "bright side" to his conquest and rule.
Georgia Tann lied, bribed, and kidnapped her way to an utterly dehumanizing human trafficking empire of unconscionable scale that preyed on the children of poor families for personal profit. She cut every corner she could, grifting and socializing her way to an untouchable position where the rich and powerful were on her side so none of her victims had any recourse. She was the goddamned Bogeyman; she was Krampus for parents; she was the faerie who takes your child in the night and doesn't even bother to leave a changeling in its place. This woman did things that we normally attribute to monsters of legend, with a smile on her face and an air of utter authority - and she got away clean. Over half a century after her death, people read this, look at her heartless marketing - literally calling children "merchandise" behind closed doors, and "accessories" & "presents" in goddamn public - and notice that something just happened to change for the better, completely by accident, as a result of her ruthlessly self-serving methods.
Any good that came from Georgia Tann was a complete and total accident. There's no complication, there's no room for nuance, this shouldn't wrinkle your brain. If Beulah George Tann had seen a way to increase her clients' desperation and strengthen her stranglehold on the industry by further stigmatizing adoption and driving it even farther beneath public concern, for even a 1% increase in her ROI, she would've done it in a Thanos snap. She was a daughter of high society who was the first woman in her state to pass the bar, and could have been a 19th century feminist icon; instead, she allowed one fly in her expensive-ass ointment to push her down a greased slide into a life of ruthless crime.
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