Dame Sidney Jane Browne, GBE, RRC & Bar (5 January 1850 – 13 August 1941) was the first appointed Matron-in-Chief of the newly formed Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS).

Browne was appointed a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1919 and, in 1922, she became the first President of the Royal College of Nursing, a post she held until 1925.

[2] Browne was posted to active service in the Second Boer War from October 1899, where over the next three years she was superintending sister at three different base hospitals, for which she received the Royal Red Cross.

[1][4] In 1918, Browne told her nurses: "Put a high ideal before you, and do your future service in a greater strength than your own, and your life will be for the betterment of the world.

[1] Browne was recognised for her work in the First World War in the 1919 New Year Honours, when she was appointed a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire.

She received many honours for her work including an honorary degree in 1925 from Leeds University, the freedom of West Bromwich; and in July 1927, she was awarded the International Florence Nightingale Medal by the League of Red Cross Societies.