The moving image and the photographic record: the faces, the places and the first moments of a story that has touched millions of families.
On film
Two films to begin the collection.
Louise Brown is born. Film of her delivery by caesarean section at Oldham and District General Hospital, 25 July 1978, with Patrick Steptoe, Jean Purdy and Robert Edwards.Filmmaker and rights holder to be confirmed.
IVF Museum: Early Development and Embryo Transfer.Filmmaker and rights holder to be confirmed.
The birth that changed everything
On 25 July 1978 the world met Louise Brown. These are the faces of that summer, and the year that followed.
Patrick Steptoe, Jean Purdy and Robert Edwards with the newborn Louise Brown, Oldham, 25 July 1978.Photographer and rights holder to be confirmed.Robert Edwards, Patrick Steptoe, Lesley Brown holding Louise Brown, and Jean Purdy, at Louise Brown's first birthday party, July 1979.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 18/9/1/4.Bunny Austin, Barbara Rankin, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy, October 1978. Barbara Rankin holds a cartoon by Alan Handyside about the birth of Louise Brown.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. Barbara Rankin's scrapbooks, BARA 3.
The four founders
A scientist, a surgeon and a nurse in England, and a doctor in Calcutta.
Robert Edwards with Alan Gates and others at a meeting at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1956.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 18/4/1.Patrick Steptoe performing a laparoscopic procedure during the clinical research at Oldham, c.1968 to 1978.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 18/1/4.Jean Purdy. Undated.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 18/7/8.Subhas Mukherjee.Photographer and rights holder to be confirmed.Patrick Steptoe holding the first Greek IVF baby, 20 January 1982.Dimis Argyropoulos / OTE Group Museum, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.Louise Brown presenting Robert Edwards with the Barbara Eck Manning Award, 1991 to 1993.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 18/6/6.Robert Edwards with Howard and Georgeanna Jones at Howard Jones' birthday party, Johns Hopkins, November 2000.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 18/4/55.Robert Edwards in 2010.Susannny, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
In their own hand
Letters from the Edwards papers at the Churchill Archives Centre. Select a page to read it at full size.
First page of Robert Edwards' letter to Ruth Fowler Edwards from Johns Hopkins Medical School, 13 July 1965.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 17/3.Jean Purdy's letter to Robert Edwards from California, December 1969 (first of seven pages). The full letter is on Jean Purdy's page.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 1/7/9.Robert Edwards to the Hospital Secretary, 7 July 1980, asking for two plaques that would name Jean Purdy among others.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 1/1/1/52.Enoch Powell to Robert Edwards, March 1985. Powell visited Bourn Hall on 3 April 1985, and the two corresponded about embryo research and the Bill.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The Papers of Robert Edwards, EDWS 1/2/18.
The places
Where the work was done, and where its story is kept.
Dr Kershaw's Hospice, formerly Dr Kershaw's Cottage Hospital, Royton, 2011.Place of Conception by Peter Thwaite, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph and Wikimedia Commons.The Royal Oldham Hospital, successor to Oldham and District General Hospital, 2011.David Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph and Wikimedia Commons.Bourn Hall Clinic, 2018.Amy.waddell, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.The Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, 2019.Cmglee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.The Queen Victoria Hospital, Melbourne, 1945, where Australia's first frozen-embryo pregnancies were achieved in the 1980s.Victorian Railways, 1945. State Library Victoria. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The science, up close
The cells, the instruments and the earlier pioneers whose work came first.
Select any photograph to see it at full size. Archive photographs are shown from the Churchill Archives Centre's online exhibition until the museum's own copies arrive. Where a photographer or rights holder is still to be confirmed, the caption says so.
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