 His family moved to Camperdown in Sydney where the young Ted Larkin was schooled at St Benedict's Broadway, run by the Marist Brothers.For his last two years of senior schooling he boarded at St. Joseph's College, Hunters Hill, where he played in the college's 1896 first rugby XV.After school he worked in journalism before joining the Metropolitan Police Force in 1903 as a foot-constable, later being promoted to first-constable in 1905.