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Fr Theobald Mathew

1790–1856

 

When the United States embraced Prohibition in the 1920s, it was the culmination of a temperance movement that had begun a very long time before.  Among the first movers of the crusade against drink was an Irish priest known to all as the Apostle of Temperance.

      Theobald Mathew, called Tobias by his family, was born at Thomaston Castle, outside Cashel, in County Tipperary, on 10th October 1790.  His father, James Mathew, was a distinguished Catholic, and Theobald was the fourth of twelve children by his mother, Anney Whyte.  His charm and kindness stood out from childhood: 'Darlin' master Toby, a born saint', proclaimed his mother, who was hopeful that he would fulfil her dream of having a priest in the family.

      At the age of twelve, Mathew was sent to St Canice's Academy in Kilkenny, where he stayed for seven years.  In Kilkenny he came under the influence of two Capuchins and in 1807 he entered Maynooth College to study for the priesthood, but left.  The following year he was accepted into the Capuchins.  He was ordained on Easter Sunday, 1813, and spent a year in Kilkenny before being sent to join the Capuchin friars in Cork.  There he soon distinguished himself with his gentlemanly ways.  Based in the Little Friary, he set about creating a school, industrial classes, and benefit societies.  He created a cemetery for Cork's Catholics by buying up the botanic gardens in 1830.  In 1822 his superiors recognized his talents and appointed him provincial of the Capuchins.  He held this post for twenty-nine years, eventually resigning because of ill health.

      In Ireland, the temperance movement had been begun among the Quakers, but in 1838 Fr Mathew became head of the Cork Total Abstinence Society after much urging from a close friend.  The first meeting was held on 10th April 1838, and Fr Mathew was the first to record his own pledge of total abstinence.  He proved to be a wonderfully charismatic leader.  Very soon he had persuaded many thousands to 'take the pledge' not to drink again.

      The political situation was, as so often in Ireland, disturbed by troubles of one kind or another.  Fr Mathew kept the movement a non-partisan one and retained and expanded his support among Protestants in Munster.

      He had an extraordinary presence, and many simple folk credited him with healing powers, although he was always anxious to deny them.  As a preacher, Fr Mathew drew thousands all across Ireland to him.  He was in Limerick in 1839, and in Dublin in 1840.  By 1843 he could write to a friend, 'I have now, with the Divine Assistance, hoisted the banner of Temperance in almost every parish in Ireland'.

      The English novelist William Thackeray, no lover of either the Irish or the Catholic Church, met him during a visit to Cork in 1842.  'Avoiding all political questions, no man seems more eager than he for all the practical improvements of this country.  Leases and rents, farming improvements, reading societies, music societies - he was full of these, and his schemes of temperance above all.'  Thackeray's own countrymen would share in his crusade.  During the years 1842 and 1843 Fr Mathew travelled in Scotland and England, preaching temperance and signing up thousands more to the pledge.  It is said some two hundred thousand people were enrolled.

      The grim shadow of the famine passed over Ireland, beginning in 1845.  Fr Mathew had been among the first to alert the government as to what was happening, as want and distress grew in Cork and other areas of Munster.  In the cities he was deeply involved in famine relief; he even stopped the work on the Capuchin church and gave the money for food.  Ireland was left stunned by the disaster, and the temperance movement lost ground.  In 1847 Fr Mathew was the choice of the local clergy for bishop of Cork, but he was passed over by Rome.

      In the spring of 1848 his untiring work finally caught up with him; he suffered a stroke.  Despite his evident ill health, he went to America in 1849 and visited twenty-five states, pledging some hundreds of thousands of people.  These numbers seem extraordinary, but it is claimed that he enrolled up to seven million people in his travels at a time when the population of Ireland was 6,552,367 (1851 census).

      Temperance was not unknown in the United States.  In 1836, 'cold water societies' had been introduced by the Rev. Thomas Hunt, who provided pledge cards to children to take home for others to sign.  The first Prohibition law was passed in Tennessee in 1838.  By the early 1840s, temperance societies were much in vogue, supported by both Protestant clergymen and mill owners, who thought sober workers would be better for business.  A temperance novel by Lucius Sargent, My Mother's Gold Ring (1834), sold 113,000 copies.  By 1872 a Prohibition party was able to hold its first convention to nominate a candidate for the presidency.  With all this enthusiasm in America, it is not surprising that on his travels Fr Mathew managed to sign up a total of six-hundred thousand pledges.

      In December 1851 he returned to Cork, his health broken.  He was saddened that many of those millions who were said to have taken the pledge had gone back to the drinking once his presence had passed.  He felt his mission had failed, but his name and reputation would enable many others to carry on his work in later years, not only in Ireland but elsewhere in the world.  As the American experiment showed, there is no easy answer to the problem of drink, to which has now been added the even worse scourge of drug addiction.  But the success of Fr Mathew, as limited as it was, shows what can be done about social problems through energy, persistence, and personal charm.  Fr Mathew died in Queenstown (now Cobh), just outside Cork, on 8th December 1856, and his simple grave soon became a place of pilgrimage.