He was born at Thomastown, near Golden, County Tipperary, on 10 October 1790, to James Mathew and his wife Anne, daughter of George Whyte, of Cappaghwhyte.

[10] The Capuchin church in Cork, Holy Trinity, stands on Father Mathew Quay and was commissioned by him.

At its height, just before the Great Famine of 1845–49, his movement enrolled some 3 million people, or more than half of the adult population of Ireland.

[12] While Father Mathew founded the temperance movement in Ireland, it was part of a wider effort to improve the life chances of poor labourers.

A biography, written shortly after his death, credits Mathew's work with a reduction in Irish crime figures of the era:The number of homicides, which was 247 in 1838, was only 105 in 1841.

Many of his hosts, including John Hughes, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, were anti-abolitionists[16] and wanted assurances that Mathew would not stray outside his remit of battling alcohol consumption.

[17] In order to avoid upsetting these anti-abolitionist friends in the US, he snubbed an invitation to publicly condemn chattel slavery, sacrificing his friendship with that movement.

[citation needed] Around 2014, the refurbished and modernised tower was sold for approximately one million euro.

[22] An eyewitness description of the tower, from the summer of 1848, is included in Asenath Nicholson's Annals of the Famine in Ireland in 1847, 1848 and 1849.