James Charles Mathew

Sir James Charles Mathew (10 July 1830 – 9 November 1908) was an Irish-born judge. Born in an Irish Catholic family in Cork, Mathew was educated at the largely Protestant Trinity College, Dublin, before joining the English bar. In 1881, although still a junior barrister, he was appointed to the High Court of Justice, where he sat in the Queen's Bench Division and was said to be the best nisi prius judge of his time. He was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 1901, before resigned from the bench due to health reasons in 1905. Mathew was a driving force behind the creation of Commercial List in 1895, the forerunner of the modern Commercial Court, and was the first judge in charge of the List. Early life and education Mathew was born at Lehenagh House, Cork, on 10 July 1830, the eldest son of Charles Mathew by his wife Mary, daughter of James Hackett of Cork. The Temperance campaigner Father Theobald Mathew was his uncle, and it was largely due to his representations that the nephew, after receiving his early education at a private school at Cork, was sent at the age of fifteen to Trinity College, Dublin, an unusual step at that period for a member of a Catholic family. He graduated as senior moderator and gold medallist in 1850, then entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn on 1 June 1851, and read in the chamber of Thomas Chitty. He was called to the bar in Hilary term 1851, having obtained in the previous November an open studentship. He was made a bencher in Easter term 1881. Career at the bar For some ten years his progress was very slow. In the meantime he found scope for his debating and argumentative powers at the Hardwicke Society, of which he was one of the founders; and the humour and sarcasm which never forsook him brought him into prominence at the social gatherings of the Home Circuit mess. When business at last came to him, it found him thoroughly versed in the intricacies of pleading and practice and ready to seize every opportunity. He had a strong natural aptitude for the practical side of law, and from the outset of his career at the bar he showed impatience of technicalities and determination to get at the real points at issue.