Jean Barthelemy Arles Dufour 1797 - 1872

Jean Barthelemy Arles Dufour (real name Barthelemy Francois Arles Dufour) 1797 - 1872 was a French silk manufacturer, and a major industrialist in the textile industry in Lyons.

Jean Barthelemy Arles Dufour  was a patient of Samuel Hahnemann, he was also a keen lay homeopath, who influenced William Leaf to discover homeopathy.

Arles Dufour was a St. Simeon and a follower of Francois Marie Charles Fourier, and he knew Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, John Bowring, Michele Chevalier, Richard Cobden, Barthelemy Prosper Enfantin, James de Rothschild, and Paulin Talabot, and he was also a friend of Paul Francois Curie, Franz Liszt, William Leaf, and J A Schubert.

Arles Dufour was a member of the Central Association of Homeopaths in Leipsig, alongside Albrecht, Baumann, Ernst von Brunnow, Pierre Dufresne, Anton Fischer, Carl Franz, Gaumann, Gustav Wilhelm Gross, Comte Sebastien Gaeten Salvador Maxime Des Guidi, Carl Georg Christian Hartlaub, Frantz Hartmann, Carl Haubold, Hofrath, Kretschmar, Kruger Hansen, William Leaf, Johan Joseph Wilhelm Lux, Moritz Wilhelm Mueller, Georg August Heinrich Muhlenbein, Charles Gaspard Peschier, Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, Gottlieb Martin Wilhelm Ludwig Rau, Rohl, Mathias Roth, Ernst Ferdinand Rueckert, Rummel, John Ernst Stapf, Suffert, Timotheus Samuel Thorer, Karl Friedrich Gottfried Trinks, George Adolph Weber, Friedrich Wolf, Paul Wolf, and many others.

With William Leaf, Arles Dufour placed a plaque commemorating Samuel Hahnemann’s house in Meissen.

For Samuel Hahnemann’s 83rd birthday, the French homeopaths paid for an elaborate bust of Hahnemann, with a golden crown of laurel leaves, and inscribed with the names of many famous French homeopaths, including Arles Dufour.

Arles Dufour attended diners with the Friends in Council, alongside Neil Arnott, Edwin Chadwick Rowland Hill, John Stuart Mill, and Lyon Playfair.

Arles Dufour was ‘full of enthusiasm for public reforms and had a great influence on the ducational reforms of his time’, campaigining for the relief of the poor, for the education of women, personally escorting Julie Victoire Daubie to Paris to collect the baccalaureate she had obtained in Lyon in 1861 (Julie Victoire Daubie was the first French woman who won the right to attend baccalaureate).

At this time William Leaf had business relations with Jean Barthelemy Arles Dufour, then a large silk merchant in Lyon. Jean Barthelemy Arles Dufour was an earnest and enlightened homeopath, and he induced William Leaf to take some medicines which he himself prescribed for him.

The effect of these was so remarkable that William Leaf was encouraged to continue the treatment. William Leaf went over to Paris, where Samuel Hahnemann was practicing, and placed himself under his care.

Son of Jean François Arles (b. Lodeve (Hérault) - died on 28 January 1811 Paris) whose father was a former policeman of Louis XVI, the commander of this place, and Claire Tichy, daughter of shopkeepers (married 1st March 1791).

François Barthélemy is the only survivor of seven children of the couple. Spouse (marriage of 18 October 1824 in Leipzig) Pauline Louise Henriette Dufour (born 30 September 1805 in Leipzig) daughter of Paul Emile Dufour (born on 1st July 1779 in Leipzig, but from Protestants who emigrated from Cévenols time dragonnades) and Pauline Adelaide Janssen (native of Berlin), hence its name Arles-Dufour.

Father of four children: Gustave (1829) Adelaide (1830) Alphonse (1835) and Henri François Armand (Paris 3 June 1842)

After this he lived in towns across France and Italy in terms of assignments of his father eventually moved to Paris in 1809 when his father retired. His studies in high school were suspended after the death of his father (1811). He earned a living in one of the many factories in shawls Path. During the Hundred Days, he became foreman at 17 years in a factory.

As a soldier in June 1815 he went to Belgium to fight but only met the remains of the military defeat at Waterloo.

As a commissionnaire in silk, he travelled and lived in various German cities, Frankfurt (1816) and Leipzig (1817) where he met Paul Emile Dufour (his future father in law) one of the four members of the Dufour brothers house, where he became one of the collaborators.

In 1819 he stopped in Lyon for the first time, and founded a branch of the house in Leipzig. He travelled to England in 1824 and 1826 to investigate the foreign factories there, and until 1831 he made frequent visits to London. On 7 January 1832, at age 34 he became a member of the Chambre de Commerce de Lyon. In 1833 he was concerned about the industry and believed Lyons was threatened by the development of foreign factories. In 1834, in his booklet A word on the foreign manufacture of soieries, he argued that the development of Prussia will come through newly established industrial state it will become.

With Barthelemy Prosper Enfantin he campaigned at the Isthmus of Suez.  Juror of the exhibition of 1849 and of the Universal Exhibitions in London and Paris (1851 and 1855) attached to the deck from 1853 as Secretary General. Opened in Paris a trading and commission for silk.  Between 1845 and 1852 he invested in the railways (Paris-Lyon, Lyon-Avignon, Avignon-Marseille, Grand Central)

He was a Lyon City Councilor and Deputy Mayor (1830), and awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur (février 1837) Officier (1854)