Dodie Smith in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester

609 Stretford Road, Old Trafford, Greater Manchester.

 

'DODIE SMITH
1896–1990
Author of
"One Hundred and One Dalmatians"
lived here as a child.
It was so quiet and semi-rural
that the corncrake could
still be heard.'

I assume that the final sentence on the plaque is a quotation from The One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956), although I can't find a reference to it anywhere on the internet.

Smith was born in Whitefield, Bury but on the death of her father moved with her mother to the home of her maternal grandparents, William and Margaret Furber. In her first autobiography, Look Back with Love: A Manchester Childhood (1974), she mentions William as one of the reasons for her becoming a playwright. She also lived here with aunts and uncles, and gives her uncle Harold, an amateur actor, as another reason. When her mother Ella remarried in 1914, she moved to London with them.

Smith published eleven plays, nine novels and four autobiographies.