The 1848 revolutions in Europe gave impetus to a number of Polish socialist activists to settle in London and establish the ""Gromada Londyn"" between 1855 and 1861. They sought support from other European activists who were in the city forming the First Internationale. The social connections formed between Poland and Britain encouraged the influential Polish Łubieński family to forge further trade links between the two countries. The anglophile banker, Henryk Łubieński prompted his business associate and Polish "King of Zinc", Piotr Steinkeller, to open "The London Zinc Works" off Wenlock Road in London's Hoxton in 1837, with a view to exporting zinc sheeting to India. Moreover, two of Łubieński's grandsons were sent to board at the Catholic Ushaw College in Durham. Other relatives married into the old recusant Grimshaw and Bodenham de la Barre family of Rotherwas. Subsequently, the Redemptorist Venerable Fr. Bernard Łubieński (1846–1933) spent many years as a Catholic missionary in England. The Polish Catholic Mission in England and Wales began its pastoral work for Polish émigrés in 1853 with church services in Soho's Sutton Street and with the arrival of Sr. Franciszka Siedliska and two other nuns to start a Polish school.