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Catherine Watkins Barmby
Goodwyn Barmby
During the first half of the nineteenth-century there were several new philosophical and religious schools of thought that influenced public opinion. Some of those schools of thought lead to direct action sponsored by the members themselves. A couple of these movements have already been talked about during this series.
Three of these movements (Saint Simonianism, Fourierism, and Owenism) are closely related: they all supported 'associationism' in one form or another. Associationism, considered by some as an early form of socialism, was an amalgamation of what would today be considered communal living (where many of the child-rearing and housekeeping chores were performed in common), co-operative workshops, and food co-operatives with adult education programs both for members and for the larger community.
All of these philosophical schools influenced one another and influenced people who were not active members as their ideas seeped into the wider culture -- just as today, people are influenced a range of organizations to which they do not necessarily belong. (For example, someone can support environmental protection or recycling without being a member of any environmental organization.)
As we saw with James Mill and William Thompson, each school of thought came in several varieties, just as today there are a range of opinions within each type of religious organization and social movement. Most of the early and middle nineteenth-century individuals discussed in this series accepted to a greater or lesser degree one or more of these schools of thought.
At the same time, the established religions and more widely known, if not more widely supported, reform movements coexisted with the new-comers. Movements for abolition, temperance, moral reform (anti-prostitution), trade unionism, and the creation public schools and other forms of public infrastructure co-existed with the more radical reform efforts such as the Chartists.
Reform movements by their very nature begin with a handful of advocates attempting to convince others of the worthiness of their cause. If the reform movement is successful, with time, increasing minorities of citizens support the reform until a certain critical mass is reached at which point the reform is adopted. The feminist movements within each of these movements was considered on the fringe of the movement – feminists were on the fringe of the fringe, so to speak. Their numbers were small, but they were talking to a very special subset of the entire population: the people who were activist reformers – the people who were unafraid to adopt controversial positions on a subject and to set about making change. At the same time, feminists were learning the skills they would later need to build woman's rights organizations and to promote their agenda, just as American woman's rights activists and suffragists learned their organization building skills in the abolition and temperance movements. Consequently, over the long term, the influence of the feminists in those organizations would be far out of proportion to their numbers.
Here is a brief summary of the movements.
Utilitarianism: primarily an upper-class philosophical school that set the standard of the "greatest amount of happiness is spread among the greatest number of people" possible as a way of judging competing social, religious, and political policies. Adherents: Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, William Thompson, Anna Wheeler, and John Stuart Mill in his youth.
Saint Simonianism: Distinctly non-political, primarily a mystic, religious organization that strove to change people's attitudes. Believed in educated members of the community leading society using scientifically arrived at principles and policies. The most sexually radical of the movements with *some* proponents advocating 'free sex.' Adherents: Enfantin and Women of Tribune des femmes.
Fourierism: Successor to Saint Simonianism. Very short-lived. Primarily an intellectual movement that largely supported traditional marriages and emphasized economic issues. Was never able to raised funds to begin a commune. Adherents: Eugénie Niboyet.
Owenism: Successor to both Saint Simonianism and Fourierism. Primarily an economic movement, creating communes throughout England and the US. Weak support for traditional marriage arrangements.
Chartism: Primarily a working-class political reform organization which advocated a six-point plan for reforming government including universal male suffrage and the secret ballot. Of the other organizations mentioned here, connected most strongly with Unitarianism.
Unitarianism: Primarily a middle-class religious movement derived from Christianity. Believed in the inherent equality of all men and women and that, in the long term, social changes would be permanent only if people's attitudes were changed. Consequently, unitarians were vigorous debaters. They also became involved in contemporary reform movements, particularly those that stressed education. Staunch supporters of traditional sexual morality, but advocates of reforms within marriage, reforms directed at creating companionate marriages. Adherents: William Thompson, Anna Wheeler, William Fox.
Membership among the organizations overlapped. Utilitarians were Unitarians and Unitarians were Chartists. Since one was a philosophical school, one was a religion, and one a political movement, people could comfortably belong to all three movements at the same time. Each individual would emphasize one movement over the others – for example, the Unitarian minister William J. Fox was also associated with the utilitarians and the Chartists. Other people moved from movement to movement throughout their lifetime, starting, say as an Owenite and moving to Unitarianism when the Owenite movement collapsed.
A product of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Unitarians were staunch believers in democracy. They conceived that the state and the family were intimately intertwined: a democratic form of government could only rest upon a society with democratic family structures, a tyrannical government could only rest upon a society with a tyrannical familial structure, and the morals which guided a person's private life would also govern their political choices. For a democracy to succeed, democratic principles could not be confined to the public sphere and the government, but must be extended to the private sphere and the domestic hearth . If the family, the core of the nation, could be reformed, liberty would spread throughout the land. At the same time, if women were granted equality in the public sphere, their equality in the home would follow.
Not all Unitarians supported woman suffrage, but the radical Unitarians did support the emancipation of women including woman suffrage. They also emphasized equal education for all children to make them wise citizens.
As early as 1832, Unitarians demonstrated their commitment to woman suffrage. In that year radical Unitarian Matthew Davenport Hill stood for office, publicly endorsed female suffrage during the campaign, and won the election. In this same year the first petition for female suffrage was presented to Parliament and James Silk Buckingham declared himself publicly on the issue, arguing in Parliament that women are entitled to political autonomy. Henceforth, feminist agitation would remain a component of radical Unitarianism.
At this time, most of the public supporters of woman suffrage were male for a number of reasons – women were still largely prohibited from public speaking, women were more susceptible to public pressure to conform to traditional roles, and women were afraid to discredit the movement for woman suffrage by allowing their opponents to use their presence in public as a justification for their opposition. Dozens of men supported woman suffrage by writing journal articles and books, making speeches, challenging public speakers, and debating opponents both privately and publicly on the issue. Gleadle mentions at least a dozen journals or magazines that printed pro-woman suffrage articles between 1831 and 1851. The pro-suffrage Unitarian men also supported Chartists and utilitarians, challenging their colleagues in both those movements to support woman suffrage.
Although the radical Unitarians failed in their effort to win suffrage for women, their efforts did have long term consequences. After the 1848 Revolutions on the continent, the resulting importation of feminist literature from France and elsewhere, and the awakening of Englishwomen to their own legal disabilities, English women began seriously working for their own rights and eventually for suffrage. When they began their efforts, they found ready-made literature and a quarter-century long heritage of discourse to appropriate for their movement. The Unitarians, too, performed the function of what today is known as "consciousness raising" – they informed women of their disabilities, "named the problem," and provided potential solutions to the problem, saving the first generation of feminist activist an enormous amount of intellectual labor.
Catherine and Goodwyn, her husband, Barmby were influential Owenites in the late 1830s and early 1840s before moving into the radical Unitarian orbit in the 1840s. Both had established reputations as staunch feminists. Catherine had published articles in the Owenite newspaper, the New World Order, under the pen name of 'Kate.' Catherine also published feminist articles in People's Press. Catherine urged women to take up the cause of woman suffrage and woman's rights. The Spirit of the Age and Holyoake's Reasoner advertised Goodwyn's work.
In 1841 Catherine and Goodwyn Barmby published their 'Declaration of Electoral Reform' in which they demanded that the People's Charter be amended to include female suffrage. Goodwyn had earlier written articles published in Promethean exhorting Chartists to redact the Charter with female suffrage added, complaining that as it then existed it was 'nothing but General Masculine Suffrage.' He went on to proclaim, 'Every argument that the Chartist brings against Whig and Tory for not admitting the working-man to the right of voting, can we bring against the Chartist for not advocating the right of the woman to the franchise.'
Today's excerpt is already on-line at a Rutgers University website entitled "How Did Women Involved In Radical Religious And Political Movements In Europe Affect The Women's Rights Movement In The Nineteenth Century United States?" by students of Professor Nancy Hewitt. excerpt from "New Tracks For The Times: Or, Warmth, Light, And Food For The Masses, Demand For The Emancipation Of Woman, Politically And Socially", Catherine Barmby, 1843. pp.1-6.. The document can be found in Volume 1 of Sources of British Feminism, a six volume set. Women's Industrial Independence (Apostle and Chronicle of the Communist Church, Volume 1, Number 1) [1848] Catherine Barmby
Footnotes
References:
Kathryn Gleadle, The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women's Rights Movement, 1831 – 1851 [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995]
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last updated February 2003