Michael Crawford - Early Life

Early Life

Michael Crawford was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England as Michael Patrick Smith. He was brought up by his mother, Doris Agnes Mary Pike, and her parents, Montague and Edith Kathleen (née O'Keefe) Pike, whom Crawford described as a "close-knit Roman Catholic family". His maternal grandmother was born in Ireland, and lived to be 99 years old.

His mother's first husband, who was not his biological father, Arthur Dumbell "Smudge" Smith (born 1917/1918 – died 6 September 1940)] was killed, aged 22, in 1940 during the Battle of Britain, less than a year after they married. Sixteen months after Smith's death (on 6 September 1940), Crawford was born, the result of a short-lived relationship and given the surname of his mother's first husband.

During his early years, he divided his time between the army camp in Wiltshire, where he and his mother lived during the war, and the Isle of Sheppey off the coast of Kent, where his mother had grown up and where Crawford would live with his mother and maternal grandparents. There he attended St. Michael's Catholic College, Bexley. At the end of the war, his mother re-married, to a grocer, Lionel Dennis "Den" Ingram. The couple moved to London, where Crawford attended Oakfield Preparatory School, Dulwich, where he was known as Michael Ingram. His mother's second marriage, however, was stormy and abusive, according to Crawford, and she died at age 44 from acute pancreatitis. After his mother's death, young Michael was taken under the wing an acting family, the Kendalls, led by music hall star Marie Kendall.