[5] Nelli Kenyon with The Nashville Tennessean reported that Tann's childhood home in Hickory, Mississippi, was a popular neighborhood gathering spot.

[4] Tann attended Martha Washington College in Abingdon, Virginia, graduating with a degree in music in 1913,[3] and took courses in social work at Columbia University in New York for two summers.

[10][12] In Memphis, Tann was hired as the Executive Secretary at the Shelby County branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society.

Through pressure tactics, threats of legal action, and other ways, she would dupe or coerce birth parents, mostly poor single mothers, to turn the children over to her custody, often under false pretenses.

Alma Sipple, one of Tann's victims, described her as "a stern-looking woman with close-cropped grey hair, round wireless glasses, and an air of utter authority.

[27] In a 1937 governmental report by Emma Annie Winslow, a prominent American home economist and researcher,[28] she reported that the three homes for unwed mothers in Memphis, in cooperation with the local health department, had committed to keeping mothers with their infants for at least three months before seeking adoption, especially to complete breastfeeding.

[32] Tann was documented taking children born to unwed mothers at birth, claiming that the newborns required medical care.

When the mothers asked about the children, Tann or her accomplices would explain that the babies had died when they had been placed in foster homes or adopted.

[14] Tann destroyed records of the children who were processed through the Society and conducted minimal background checks on the adoptive homes.

[14] Many of the files of the children were fictionalized before being presented to the adoptive parents, which covered up the child's circumstances before being placed with the society.

[34][page needed][35] Tann would identify children as being from homes that could not provide for their care, and Kelley would push the matter through her dockets.

[22][page range too broad] Tann also had connections with former Memphis, Tennessee, mayor E.H. "Boss" Crump, who had an influential political presence until his death.

[38] She enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and was widely respected in the community, counting among her friends prominent families, politicians, and legislators.

[40] Tann regularly ignored doctors' recommendations for sick children, denying them care or medicine, which often led to preventable deaths from illnesses such as diarrhea.

[22][page range too broad] Reasons of the day included the fact that young, unwed mothers were often coerced to give up wanted children, the suitability of the parents was often ignored, information about the child's heritage and medical history was lost, and adoptive parents were unaware of any physical or mental illness.

[42] The Tennessee governor of the time, Gordon Browning, launched an investigation into the society on September 11, 1950, after receiving reports that the agency was selling children for profit.

[22][page range too broad] Two days later, the story was published in the media nationwide, including in the Memphis, Tennessee Commercial Appeal and The New York Times.

[22][page range too broad] Public Welfare Commissioner J. O. McMahan accused Tann and her cohorts of receiving as much as US$1 million in profits.

[44] The case was settled out of court with her beneficiaries ceding two-thirds of her $82,000 estate to the Tennessee Children's Home Society.

[47] Tann died of uterine cancer three days before the state filed charges against the society, thus escaping prosecution.

[14] For her part, Judge Kelley was believed to be receiving bribes for ruling in Tann's favor; however, a 1951 report to Browning by the Tennessee Department of Public Welfare said that while she had "failed on many occasions to aid destitute families and permitted family ties to be destroyed", she had not personally profited from the rulings.

"[48]In her book, Rural Unwed Mothers: An American Experience, Mazie Hough makes the argument that the implementation of social work standards in Tennessee without providing the needed funding contributed to abuses in the system.

[50] Tann's custom of creating false birth certificates for adoptees (which she did to hide the origins of the child) had become standard practice nationwide.

[52] Believing in class distinctions, Tann felt that children should be taken from low-income families and placed with what she called "people of the higher type.

"[54] While the cohabitation of two financially independent women, referred to as "Boston marriages", had once been socially acceptable, such arrangements began to be viewed as suspiciously homosexual.

[55] In March 1925, Atwood placed an announcement in the local paper that she had secretly married a Captain George A. Hollinsworth of San Francisco, California and that the couple would be moving there to live.

[10] Tann adopted Ann Atwood Hollinsworth on August 2, 1943, in Dyer County, Tennessee, a legal provision that same-sex couples used at the time to ensure that their partners would inherit their property.

[66] In October 2019, Wingate and Judy Christie released the book Before and After: The Incredible RealLife Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society.

As the show suggested, she wrote to Tennessee's Right to Know, a volunteer agency in Memphis that reunites families separated by adoption.

His 2004 autobiography To Be the Man (2004) begins with the opening chapter, "Black Market Baby", discussing his birth and childhood.