John McNeil Smith was born on 10 October 1927 in Jamaica in the West Indies to John Alexander Smith, a civil servant, and his wife Ida Maud, née Bayley. He was educated at Wolmers Boys' School from which he obtained a scholarship to the University of Sheffield and read medicine. He qualified MB, BS in June 1951 winning the prize for surgery. After obtaining the FRCS he returned to Jamaica and became associate lecturer in the department of surgery at the University of the West Indies as well as running a successful consultant orthopaedic practice. He specialised in orthopaedics and attended a postgraduate course at Harvard in 1960. From 1963 to 1986 he was the senior consultant orthopaedic surgeon in the Island Medical Service, and was in charge of the largest public hospital as well as the Children's Hospital. He married Dorothy, a nurse, in 1951, and secondly Audrey, in 1974, but had no issue. His hobbies were tennis, bridge and sailing. He was particularly interested in paediatric problems and published on the aetiology of tibia vara. He died on 19 July 1989 survived by his wife, Audrey.