July 25, 1978

Louise Brown

Birth of Louise Brown, the first child born after IVF conception

Final permission to film the birth came at 11:15 p.m. The Caesarean began fifteen minutes later, and Louise arrived at 11:47.

23:47 BST, Oldham

Louise Joy Brown was born at Oldham and District General Hospital on the night of 25 July 1978, weighing 5 pounds 12 ounces. Patrick Steptoe delivered her by Caesarean section, assisted by John Webster and a hospital team, with the physiologist Robert Edwards present.

Britain's Central Office of Information filmed the delivery. She was born alive and healthy after a full-term pregnancy — 38 weeks and 5 days in the team's original clinical account.

The proof that had been missing

Edwards had already fertilised human eggs outside the body. What no one had shown was that such an embryo could be transferred and produce a live human birth.

The egg was retrieved from Lesley Brown during a natural menstrual cycle on 10 November 1977, and the eight-cell embryo was transferred at 11:50 p.m. on 12 November.

No test tube involved

The press label stuck, but fertilisation happened in a culture dish and the incubator was a repurposed glass desiccator.

The work was shared by three people. Jean Purdy, nurse and embryologist, monitored the developing embryos and was the first to observe the relevant embryonic cell division.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The date and time of birth are exceptionally well documented in contemporary government records and the team's clinical report.
Sources variously describe the Browns as having tried to conceive for nine or ten years, apparently reflecting different counting conventions; this does not affect the birth event.