Adoption is a fairly modern concept, stemming not from Dickensian “boy for sale!” moments in Oliver Twist, but from 1920s Memphis, where a woman named Georgia Tann began quite literally stealing and selling babies. Before this point, potential parents believed in eugenics, and that the sins of the parents— sex out of wedlock say—would be visited upon the child. There were still people willing to adopt, but they were mostly mothers unable to convince their husbands to undergo the process. Tann saw this as a business opportunity and went to great lengths to facilitate the adoption process, most notably falsifying documents to make the child appear of a higher pedigree, and also refuting the popular eugenics theory with her own “blank slate” idea, which stated that a child was a product of its environment.

Barbara Bisantz Raymond’s new book on the topic is Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption, and she recently appeared on Diane Rehm to discuss, orphanages, baby farms and a terrifying story in which Tann appears at a poor woman’s door, offers to take her ill child to the hospital, and then fakes the child’s death so that she might later sell it.

Listen to the interview here.