Mathew, THEOBALD

Mathew, THEOBALD, commonly known as FATHER MATHEW, an eminent Irish apostle of temperance, was born at Thomastown in Tipperary, October 10, 1790. He studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood at Kilkenny and for a short time at Maynooth, but relinquished the secular priesthood for the religious order of the Capuchins, in which he took priest's orders in 1814, and was sent to the church of his order in the city of Cork. Here he devoted himself to the ceaseless labours of his calling with untiring zeal, and, finding that the poverty and degradation of his people were to a great extent directly due to over-drinking, was driven by his enthusiastic temper to advocate the drastic remedy of total abstinence. In 1838 he began his crusade, which quickly grew beyond the bounds of Cork, and extended to Dublin, to the North, to Liverpool, Manchester, London, Glasgow, and the other chief seats of the Irish population, even in the New World itself. His success had something of the marvellous in its character. The form of engagement partook of the religious, and was accompanied by the presentation of a medal, to which the utmost reverence was attached by the recipient; and an opinion prevailed among the poor that the mission of the 'Apostle of Temperance' was marked by many miraculous manifestations of the assistance of Heaven. Father Mathew's latter years were embittered by pecuniary embarrassments, the fruit of his unbounded charity, the enormous expenses connected with his mission, and perhaps his own improvident and unworldly habits. A Civil List pension of £300 was granted him in 1847, and a private subscription was also raised for his relief. The enthusiasm for his cause declined amid the sufferings of the potato-famine, and Father Mathew died, worn out by his labours, December 8, 1856. See Harriet Martineau's Biographical Sketches, and Lives by J. F. Maguire (1863) and F. J. Matthew (1890).