Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Mathews, Charles Edward
MATHEWS, CHARLES EDWARD (1834–1905), Alpine climber and writer, born at Kidderminster on 4 Jan. 1834, was third of six sons of Jeremiah Mathews, a Worcestershire land agent, by his wife Mary Guest. Of his five brothers, the eldest, William (1828–1901; educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, 20th wrangler 1852), was one of the leading pioneers of Alpine exploration and the largest contributor to 'Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers' (1859 and 1862); he was president of the Alpine Club 1869-71. The fourth brother, George Spencer Mathews (1836–1904, 7th wrangler in 1859 and fellow of Caius College, Cambridge), was also a noted mountaineer. Both brothers were prominent figures in municipal and social life at Birmingham.
Charles Edward was educated at King Charles I's school, Kidderminster, served his articles in Birmingham and London from 1851, and was admitted solicitor in 1856. He practised with great success in Birmingham, acted as solicitor to the Birmingham school board throughout its existence, and as clerk of the peace from 1891 till his death. He was a member of the town council from 1875 to 1881 and for nearly fifty years exerted much influence on the public and social affairs of Birmingham. One of the founders and subsequently chairman of the parliamentary committee of the Education League, he founded in 1864 the Children's Hospital, in conjunction with Dr. Thomas Pretious Heslop [q. v.], and took part for many years in its management; he set on foot the agitation which led to the reorganisation of King Edward's school, and served as a governor of the school from its reconstitution in 1878 till his death; a lifelong friend of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, he was from 1886 one of the local leaders of the liberal unionist party.
Outside professional and civic interests, Mathews's abounding energy found its main outlet in mountaineering. He was introduced to the Alps in 1856 (Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, 1st series, ch. iv) by his brother William, with whom the idea of forming the Alpine Club originated; and the foundation of the club was definitely decided upon in November 1857 by the two brothers, a cousin, Benjamin Attwood Mathews, and Edward Shirley Kennedy; the last, aided by Thomas Woodbine Hinchliff [q. v. Suppl. I], taking the leading share in its actual formation (Dec. 1857-Jan. 1858). Charles Edward Mathews played his part in the conquest of the Alps which followed during the succeeding decade, and he continued to climb vigorously for more than forty years, long after all the other original members of the Alpine Club had retired from serious mountaineering. He was president of the club from 1878 to 1880, and took a prominent part in its affairs till the last year of his life: 'no one has on the whole done so much [for mountaineering and for the Alpine Club] because no one has continued his Alpine activity over so long a period.' He was also one of the founders (1898) and the first president of the Climbers' Club, an association formed with the object of encouraging mountaineering in England and Ireland. Besides numerous papers in the 'Alpine Journal' (vols, i.-xxii.) he contributed articles on the guides Melchior and Jakob Anderegg to 'Pioneers of the Alps' (1887), and a retrospective chapter to C. T. Dent's 'Mountaineering' in the Badminton Library (1892); but his most important work in Alpine literature is 'The Annals of Mont Blanc' (1898), an exhaustive monograph, containing a critical analysis of the original narratives of the early ascents of the mountain, and a history and description of all the later routes by which its summit has been reached. Mathews himself climbed it at least twelve times.
He died at Edgbaston on 20 October 1905, and was buried at Sutton Coldfield. There is a monument to his memory in the garden of Couttet's hotel at Chamonix. Mathews married in 1860 Elizabeth Agnes Blyth, and had two sons and two daughters.
[The Times, 21 Oct. 1905; Birmingham Daily Post, 21, 23, 24, and 25 Oct. 1905; 24 Aug. 1907; Alpine Journal, xxii. 692, xxiii. 427; personal knowledge; private information.]