Early Military Career
Born Mansfield George Smith on 1 April 1859 in British India, the youngest in the family of five sons and eight daughters of Colonel John Thomas Smith (1805–1882) of the Royal Engineers, of Föelallt House, Cardigan Kent, and his wife, Maria Sarah Tyser. His father was the great grandson of John Smith (a director of both the South Sea Company and the East India Company), the second son of Abel Smith (d.1756) the Nottingham Banker. Smith joined the Royal Navy and underwent training in Britannia at Dartmouth from the age of twelve and was appointed acting sub-lieutenant in 1878. He was posted to HMS Bellerophon in 1877, and for the next seven years served in operations against Malay pirates (during 1875–6) and in Egypt in 1883. However, he increasingly suffered from severe seasickness, and in 1885 was placed on the retired list as "unfit for service".
He was recalled to duty into the foreign section of Naval Intelligence in 1898, and undertook ‘special service’, including occasional intelligence work abroad, but his main work for the next decade was the construction and command of the Southampton boom defences. He also travelled through eastern Germany and the Balkans pretending to be a highly successful German businessman, despite not speaking German. His work was so successful that he was recruited to the Secret Service Bureau (SSB) as the director of the foreign section.
In 1885 Cumming married Dora, daughter of Henry Cloete of Great Constantia, Cape Colony. After her death he married, on 13 March 1889, a Scottish heiress, Leslie Marian (May), daughter of Captain Lockhart Muir Valiant (afterwards Cumming), of the 1st Bombay Lancers and Logie, Moray. As part of the marriage settlement he changed his surname to Smith-Cumming, later becoming known as Cumming. Their only son, Alastair, a dangerous driver like his father, was killed in October 1914, driving Cumming's Rolls in France. According to an unconfirmed legend, Cumming himself hacked off his own broken leg with a penknife in the same accident.
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