Born at Cheltenham on 8 October 1864, the sixth child and third son of John Johnson Brown, of Blenheim House, Cheltenham, and Kate Fanny Luscombe, his wife. His father was a man of independent means, the son was educated at Cheltenham, where he was a day boy from September 1878 until he left to matriculate at Keble College, Oxford in October 1883 as Herbert Rochfort Johnson Brown. He then entered St Bartholomew's Hospital, and went to South Africa as soon as he had qualified, as staff surgeon to the Natal Police and surgeon to Grey's Hospital. He acted as medical officer to the Mental Hospital at Pretoria and to the Natal Government Asylum. During the war of 1914-19 he was a major on the Permanent Force Staff, Union Defence Force, South Africa, 1915. He married (1) at Maritzburg in 1902, Nina O'Meara (d 1910), and (2) in 1912, Mary Elizabeth Clements, of Hereford, who survived him but without children. He died on 29 May 1934, and was buried at Pietermaritzburg.