This is a photo of Jean Paton, age 2½ or 3, with her second adoptive father, Dr. Thomas Paton and her seven-year-old foster sister, Virginia.  Jean was adopted twice.  The first time, she was adopted on May 10, 1909, by Harry and Millie Dean, a lower-middle class couple who also lived in Detroit.  The Deans renamed the baby Madeline Viola Dean.  Baby Madeline lived with the Deans for only two years.  At age 44, Harry Dean, a house painter, contracted cancer of the liver and died on May 6, 1911.  (I have not been able to locate any photos of the Deans).  The last six months that Madeline lived under the Deans’ roof were filled with illness and the smell of death.  Some seventy years later, Paton believed that her first adoptive father’s death had left her with “an undying and fierce hatred of the spectacle of human suffering.”  Impoverished by her husband’s death, Millie Dean was unable to support Madeline.  She returned the child to the Children’s Home Society of Michigan, which again placed Madeline in a foster home.  Madeline stayed in that foster home for 7½ months.  Then on December 11, 1911, Dr. Thomas and Mary M. Paton of Ypsilanti, Michigan,  adopted Madeline and renamed her Jean Madeline Paton.