A son of the actor Charles Mathews, he achieved a greater reputation than his father in the same profession and also excelled at light comedy.

After attending Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby, he was articled as the architect Augustus Charles Pugin's apprentice.

[1] His first public appearance on the stage was made on 7 December 1835, at the Olympic Theatre in London, as George Rattleton in his own play The Humpbacked Lover, and as Tim Topple the Tiger in Leman Rode's Old and Young Stager.

[1] The following year Mathews again visited the U.S., and there in 1858 he married Mrs A. H. Davenport (Lizzie Weston), whose son Charles Willie West assumed his stepfather's surname by deed poll.

As an actor in England, Mathews held an unrivalled place in his unique vein of light eccentric comedy.

It was as the leading character in such plays as the Game of Speculation, My Awful Dad, Cool as a Cucumber, Patter versus Clatter, and Little Toddlekins, that he especially excelled.