Career
Both had established reputations as staunch feminists, and proposed the addition of women"s suffrage to the demands of the Chartist movement. Barmby was involved as an editor, writer and organiser of communitarian ventures around London from 1838 to 1848. He founded a utopian community on the Channel Islands and at times corresponded with radicals including William James Linton and Friedrich Engels.
He introduced Engels to the French communiste movement.
They founded the London Communist Propaganda Society in 1841 and, in the same year, the Universal Communitarian Association. Barmby founded the Communist Chronicle, a monthly newspaper later published by Thomas Frost.
By 1843, the Barmbys had recast their movement as a church. in all probability by the 1830s or 1840s."
Researchers at Rutgers University explain:
Although the church expired in 1849, in the mid-1840s it had more than ten congregations.3.