Sir John Jeremie (19 August 1795 – 23 April 1841) was a British judge and diplomat, Chief Justice of Saint Lucia and Governor of Sierra Leone.

He wrote four essays on Colonial Slavery pointing out the problems of slave communities and the improvements made in their conditions in Saint Lucia.

[2] In 1830, the Governor Sir Charles Colville reported that there was a great deal of bad feeling against His Majesty's Government continues to prevail and shew itself here… there is an almost total cessation in the payment of taxes...[5] He arrived there in June 1832, and the hostility to him as a known abolitionist was very difficult to handle.

[7]Jeremie could see that slavery would be illegal soon, and he predicted that other existing laws predicated on colour prejudice would be a source of further ill feeling.

In the same year he was honoured by the Anti-Slavery Society with a plaque that read: The Honourable John Jeremie one of his Majesty's Justices of the Supreme Court of the island of Ceylon etc etc By whose inflexible adherence to right principle under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty while discharging high official duties in the colonies of either hemisphere and by whose disinterested able and energetic exertions in most critical and painful situations both at home and abroad Negro Freedom has been largely advanced and the negro character raised to its just standard in public estimation.

It was also my fate as the government passes to the senior officer in garrison of whatever rank to swear in two captains, a major, and a colonel, as governors within a month.

[2]The portrait above shows him in a detail from this painting made to commemorate the event which attracted delegates from America, France, Haiti, Australia, Ireland, Jamaica and Barbados.

His confidence is apparent in the quotation above where he notes that he survived six years in Ceylon and outlived the other judges appointed to the Supreme Court there.