Smith was born on May 3, 1896 in Whitefield, UK. When she was eighteen years old, her father died, so after that she and her mother lived with her family - her grandparents, three uncles and two aunts, in an old house with a garden leaning towards the Manchester Ship Canal. Both her mother and grandmother wrote and composed. Almost everyone in the household sang and played an instrument (including pianos, a violin, a mandolin, a guitar and a banjo) and one uncle, a nonprofessional but decent actor, was usually rehearsing, preferably with Smith there to give him cues. Although she had liked theater for a while before she could read, it was hearing of her uncle's parts which really sparked her passion for acting and writing plays, especially as the cues she gave to her uncle got longer and longer and, by the age of nine, Smith had written a forty-page play.