Early Life
Webb was born in 1880 on Ellerslie Station, near Tumut, at the foot of the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales. Webb was the only child of grazier Charles Webb, originally from New Zealand, and his wife Jessie Webb, née Watson, of Scotland, who died shortly after childbirth. Webb was orphaned at age nine when her father died after an accident, and Webb was sent to live with her mother's family in Melbourne, Victoria.
Webb attended Balaclava College, in Melbourne's inner south-eastern suburbs, and passed her matriculation exams in October 1896 at the age of sixteen. She enrolled at the University of Melbourne on Valentine's Day 1898. During her undergraduate study she won the Cobden Club medal, and a share of the J. D. Wyselaskie scholarship in English constitutional history, before graduating a Bachelor of Arts in April 1902, attaining first-class honours in both history and political economy, as well as logic and philosophy. In 1904 Webb would add to this a Masters of Arts.
Read more about this topic: Jessie Webb
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