Theobald Mathew

Theobald Mathew (5 December 1866 – 20 June 1939), known as Theo Mathew, was a British barrister and legal humorist. Life and legal career Born in London, Mathew was the elder son of the Irish-born judge Sir James Charles Mathew and Elizabeth, née Biron, the daughter of a vicar. His great-uncle and namesake was the Irish temperance campaigner Father Theobald Mathew. His younger brother was the barrister and Labour MP Charles Mathew, while his sister Elizabeth was the wife of Irish Nationalist MP John Dillon. He was the uncle of Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Theobald Mathew and of Irish politician James Dillon. Mathew was educated at The Oratory School and Trinity College, Oxford, where he obtained second-class honours in History in 1888. Like his father and brother, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1890, and practiced in the chambers of Joseph Walton, later a High Court judge. In 1896, Mathew became the editor of Commercial Cases, a series of law reports on the Commercial Court, which his father had helped to create, and in 1902, he published Practice of the Commercial Court. Mathew had a large practice at the common law bar; after the First World War he frequently appeared in Canadian appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. In his later years he became a libel specialist.