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Perhaps because of past difficulties with their own research, as well as the controversies it has stirred, Steptoe and Edwards remained quiet about their successful implanting through most of Lesley Brown's pregnancy. Even though fertility experts round the globe were generally aware of their research, no announcement was forthcoming from the British doctors until April, when a reporter closing in on the story got them to admit that the birth of a test-tube baby was at hand. Even so, Steptoe and Edwards were reluctant to give any details; they even withheld the patient's name for fear that the mother might not be able to withstand the pressure of all the public prying.
Yet, as journalists pursued the story, information slowly dribbled out. Some of it came directly from the family through the Daily Mail under the syndication deal, but other facts were unearthed by reporters in Oldham, some of whom were not above using £20 notes to loosen the lips of anyone even vaguely in the know.
Thus the world learned, in prose and tone that often seemed straight from a Monty Python satiric sketch, that Les ley Brown is a pretty woman of 5 ft. 5 in., who wears her brownish hair in a pageboy cut. In her turquoise-blue hospital room, she often lounges in an easy chair, wearing a brown-and-white bell-sleeved housecoat. She spends much of her time making telephone calls, doing puzzles, knitting, nibbling on mints and eating ordinary hospital food (a typical lunch: steak and kidney pie with mashed potatoes, followed by fruit tart). Occasionally, added the Evening Chronicle, she has become weepy and depressed, and was briefly worried, until reassured by other expectant mothers, about the seemingly small size of the baby in relation to the weeks of pregnancy. Steptoe apparently tried to get her to stop smoking, but she still sneaks an occasional cigarette. Presumably, she knows of all the concern about her and her baby because she has a television and a radio in her room. From her window, she can see the hospital's children's unit with its gaily colored swings, whirling merry-go-rounds and playful youngsters. Reported a nurse: "She just feels like any other mother-to-be: tired, fed up and fat."
Before the "Browns became international celebrities, they lived quietly in a white row house in Easton, a neighborhood in Bristol, about 150 miles from Oldham. "Ever such a nice couple," say neighbors. John Brown apparently likes few things better than to tinker with his automobile and, even before the current furor, kept largely to himself. Says a friend: "He is a very polite bloke. I don't think he socializes with a lot of people." Still, the Browns, who live with John's 17-year-old daughter by a previous marriage, are hardly recluses. Before Lesley Brown was sequestered in the hospital for round-the-clock monitoring, she talked about babies with neighbors, but gave no hint of her own extraordinary pregnancy. Recalls one surprised neighbor, "I never knew there was anything unusual."