On July 26, 1924, Janet Smith was found shot in the head by a .45 calibre automatic revolver in the basement of a Shaughnessy house. The murder of the Scottish nanny rocked Vancouver. The murder touched on high-level police corruption, kidnapping, drugs, society orgies and rampant racism. This is a short excerpt from At Home With History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s heritage homes.
3851 Osler Street
Janet Smith was an attractive 23-year-old Scot who looked after Fred and Doreen Baker’s baby daughter. The Baker’s, with Janet in tow, had recently returned to Vancouver after three years in London and Paris running a “pharmaceutical business.” They decided to return home in 1923 after Scotland Yard began to investigate the business as a front for drug smuggling.
The following year, Janet was found murdered in the Shaughnessy house where they were staying.
Police botched the Smith case. First it took two days to find the bullet. Then the embalming of her body destroyed evidence at the eventual autopsy. Police first called it suicide, later saying that Janet had somehow accidentally shot herself while ironing. Finally, they clued in that there were no powder burns around the bullet hole, and unless Janet also beat herself in the back of the head, burned herself on the back with the iron, and changed her clothes after she was dead, her death was no accident.
Botched:
The newspaper headings changed to “Smith Girl Murdered.”
Wong Foon Sing, the Baker’s Chinese houseboy, found Janet in a pool of blood, and became a convenient fall guy. Frustrated that they couldn’t get a confession, at one point several men, including high ranking members of the Point Grey Police Department, dressed up as Ku Klux Klansmen, kidnapped him, dragged him to an attic, tied a heavy rope around his neck, put him on a stool, and pretended to kick it out from under him. After a staggering six weeks of torture, they dumped him in the middle of the night. Police found him stumbling along Marine Drive, rearrested him and shipped him off to Oakalla prison.
CHINESE HOUSEBOY?
Over the years, armchair detectives have come up with a few different scenarios in an attempt to solve her murder. Some say it was Fred Baker, who killed Janet to hide his drug use and illegal business dealings. Others say she was raped and murdered after a wild society party at Hycroft Manor, after which her body was dragged to Osler Street to throw off the investigation. Still others suggest it was Jack Nichol, son of Walter Nichol, the Lieutenant-Governor and publisher of the Province.
No one thinks it was the Chinese houseboy.
Wong was finally acquitted and fled to China in March 1926.
Janet’s body rests uneasily at Mountain View Cemetery, buried by Vancouver’s Scots. Around the corner from the headstone are some coins put there to pay the “ferry man” for her safe passage to the afterlife.
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