Arthur Louis Webster was born in Johannesburg on 8 October 1936, the son of Louis Martin Webster, a company director, and Dorothy May née Warren. He was educated at St Paul's Parochial School and St David's College, Inanda. Directly after leaving school he was a laboratory assistant in the African explosives and chemical industries, before winning a scholarship to Witwatersrand, where he won the Noristan laboratories scholarship and qualified in 1962. He did junior posts at the Johannesburg General Hospital under D J Du Plessis, and worked for J H Louw in Cape Town, visiting England to take the FRCS in 1971. On returning to South Africa, he entered private surgical practice in East London, becoming full-time senior consultant surgeon in 1997. In his spare time he enjoyed photography, squash, swimming and business organisation. He married Anne Justine Brink, a nurse, on 18 June 1964 and they had two sons, Sean Royden and Paul Justine, and a daughter, Janine Louise. He died on 5 January 1999 of carcinoma of the pancreas.