Hendrik Pierson (10 July 1834 – 7 August 1923) was a Dutch Lutheran minister and member of the Réveil religious revival movement.
He was president of the Ottho Gerhard Heldringstichting, an asylum for reformed prostitutes, from 1877 to 1914.
He was one of the leaders of the campaign to abolish state regulation of prostitution, and in 1898 became president of the International Abolitionist Federation.
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Early years
Hendrik Pierson was born in Amsterdam on 10 July 1834, the fourth child of Jan Lodewijk Gregory Pierson (1806–1873) and Ida Oyens (1808–1860).
He grew up in a genteel middle-class environment. He was influenced by the poetic piety of his mother and the prophetic spirit of Isaac da Costa.
He studied theology in Utrecht, and in 1857 became a minister in Heinenoord, in South Holland.
On 4 May 1857, he married Hermine Agnes Kolff (1833–1870). They would have six children.
During the years that followed he was influenced by modernism, and later said he learned to descend into the depths of his own sinful heart.
He considered resigning his office. However, by 1868 he had come to a deep and assured faith.
In 1869, Pierson moved to 's-Hertogenbosch, where he campaigned vigorously for Christian education.
He was chairman of the School Council, and formed an advocacy group for Christian education at the national level.
His first wife died in 1870.
On 1 August 1872, he married Petronella Adriana Oyens (1834–1907).
There were no children from this marriage, but his second wife acted as a beloved mother for his children from the first marriage.
Zetten institutions
Prostitution was no longer listed as a criminal offense in the 1811 penal code of the Netherlands, and was allowed to take place in semi-regulated brothels.
By 1851, when 36 towns introduced new brothel regulations, there were estimated to be about 1,000 active prostitutes in Amsterdam and 300–400 in Rotterdam and Utrecht.
Ottho Gerhard Heldring (1804–1876) was the first social activist in the Netherlands to advocate providing care to prostitutes rather than punishing or repressing them. He established the first asylum for "fallen" women in Zetten, a village in Gelderland.
In 1849 Heldring founded the "Steenbeek" asylum for prostitutes.
Heldring was supported by the Amsterdam Réveil circle, which established the Association for the Encouragement of Penitent Fallen Women in 1846.
The women and girls at the asylum stayed in an austere environment, were given basic education, read the Bible and sang.
The board took responsibility for them after their release, trying to find them jobs as domestic servants with respectable families or in institutions.
By 1870, 825 women and girls had passed through the asylum, which had inspired institutions on similar lines across the Netherlands and throughout Europe.
Hendrik Pierson succeeded Heldring.
He accepted the appointment as president of the Heldringgestichten (Heldring Asylum) in Zetten in 1877.
Here he found his vocation, putting great devotion and energy into helping vulnerable girls and women.
Abolitionist leader
Heldring had established his asylum to save women, but also testified about the evils of prostitution and tried to stir up public opinion against it.
Pierson took up this struggle.
The first congress of what would become the International Abolitionist Federation (IAF) was held in Geneva in 1877.
Pierson's future son-in-law, Willem van den Bergh, had done research at Steenbeek for a dissertation on prostitution and had been invited to the congress by Aimé Hubert.
He invited Pierson and his wife to come with him.
There Pierson was inspired by the Englishwoman Josephine Butler (1828–1906) who led the European movement to resist government-regulated prostitution, which Butler and her followers saw as state-sanctioned fornication.
Pierson was greatly impressed by Butler's speech where she discussed the God-given right of a woman to have control over her body.
He was persuaded to join the IAF despite his misgivings about the secular nature of the organization and the influence of socialist feminists.
Pierson gave Butler a link to Dutch abolitionists.
Pierson threw his energy into this cause, a struggle for the dignity of women.
In 1877 Pierson published a translation of Butler's Une Voix dans le Désert (A Voice in the Desert), an account of a tour of Europe she had made a few years earlier to visit sympathizers of the abolitionist cause.
He edited the monthly Getuigen en Redden (Testify and Save), established in 1878.
Works
Selected works included:
De heerschappij der bourgeoisie in de Nederlandsch Hervormde Kerk (The domination of the bourgeoisie in the Dutch Reformed Church) in: De Gids 33 (1869), 441-477
Aan de moderne predikanten in de Ned. Herv. Kerk (Modern pastors in the Dutch Reformed Church) ’s-Hertogenbosch 1876
Het Maandblad Getuigen (The Monthly Witnesses) in Redden 1-33 (1878-1911)
Gewettigde ontucht (Legalized Vice), Arnhem 1878
De Bode der Heldring-Gestichten (The Herald of the Heldring Asylums) 1-31 (1884-1914)