David Mark Morrissey was born in the Kensington area of Liverpool on 21 June 1964, the son of Littlewoods employee Joan and cobbler Joe. He has two older brothers named Tony and Paul, and an older sister named Karen. The family lived at 45 Seldon Street in Kensington. Decades later, as part of National Museums Liverpool's Eight Hundred Lives project, Morrissey wrote that the house had been in his family since at least 1900. His grandmother had been married there and his mother was born there. In 1971, the family moved to a larger and more modern house on the new estates at Knotty Ash, while Seldon Street was later demolished.