Hendrik Provó Kluit
The police chief who put officers in uniform, then served seven months as mayor.
Hendrik Provó Kluit was born in Utrecht on 9 September 1803 into a family of lawyers. He studied law at the Athenaeum Illustre in Amsterdam, took his doctorate in Leiden in 1829 and practised as a lawyer in Amsterdam. He lived on the Herengracht.
The man behind Amsterdam's police
From 1840 to 1850 he was Amsterdam's director of police, and in that role he introduced the police uniform and service weapon. When riots broke out in the city in 1848 he acted firmly. He also wrote about policing: in 1850 he published a pamphlet defending the independence of the police. That same year Amsterdam elected him to the House of Representatives, where he spoke rarely but at length, mostly about public order. After the April Movement of 1853, a Protestant protest wave that toppled the government, he was not re-elected.
A short spell as mayor
Soon after, on 20 May 1853, he became mayor of Amsterdam, succeeding Van Reenen, who had become a minister. He lasted just over seven months. On 1 January 1854 he left again, having been appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands. He served there until his death in The Hague on 27 October 1860 and was buried in the family grave at Katwijk aan Zee.
- 01As director of police, Provó Kluit introduced the uniform and service weapon.
- 02He came down hard on riots in Amsterdam in 1848.
- 03He was mayor for just over seven months, from May 1853 to January 1854.
- 04He then became a justice of the Dutch Supreme Court.