Background
Smith was the son of W.H. Smith, a civil engineer attached to the Admiralty.
Smith was the son of W.H. Smith, a civil engineer attached to the Admiralty.
He was educated at Epsom College and Street Mary"s Hospital Medical School, as was his older brother Percy Montague Smith (1871-1961), who was also a doctor and became Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons.
He served during the Boer War as a surgeon. Foreign service during the First World War, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was awarded the Central Bank by Britain and the croix de guerre by France. He was thrice mentioned in dispatches.
He was appointed consulting surgeon to the British Fifth Army in 1916, and later consulting surgeon to the British Second Army.
He became Senior Surgeon at Street Mary"s Hospital, London in 1922 following the retirement of Ernest Lane. As a freemason he was Grand Deacon of the Grand Lodge of England.
In later life John Maynard Smith described his father as being "a poor boy made good" who married into "landed gentry", and recalled of their relationship prior to Sidney"s death when John was eight years old "I hardly knew him. We saw him sort of Sunday lunch - literally".
He and his family lived at Number.
49 Wimpole Street in Westminster.