Saint John's Island ( ), also known as St John's, is an island in the Straits of Singapore located 6.5 km off the southern coast of Singapore. With an area of , it is the largest of the Marine Park islands which also include the Sisters' Islands and Pulau Tekukor. St John's was colonised by the British along with mainland Singapore in the 19th century and was the site of a colonial quarantine centre. In the 20th century, the island served as a detention centre, drug rehabilitation centre and refugee settlement. Singapore gained independence under the Government of Singapore in the mid-20th century and maintained sovereignty over St John's. In the present day, the island has doubled as grounds for recreational facilities and aquaculture research and development facilities.
The island is part of the Jurong Rock Formation and contains both tropical rainforest and coastal habitats, and is one of the wetlands of Singapore. It is populated by several nationally critically endangered species of plants and animals. Currently, the island has no permanent inhabitants.
Etymology St John's Island was originally named (also known as ), which combines two Malay words, and ; means either 'barking,' 'one' or 'roe'; means 'deer'. According to a member of the Stamford Raffles British delegation, John Crawfurd, they had misinterpreted the island's local name as 'St John' during their attempt to establish a port in the neighboring island of Singapore in 1819.
St John's Island and the neighbouring Lazarus Island were once collectively known by the shared Malay name and English name 'St John's'. In maps like the 1892 British Admiralty chart of Singapore Harbor, St John's and Lazarus Island were distinguished as West and East St John's, or St John's no. 2 and no. 1 respectively.British Admiralty. "Singapore Roads Surveyed by J.W. Reed, Master Commanding . . . H.M.S. Rifleman 8164." In The Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection. Stanford University Libraries. In other maps like 1872 British Possessions In The Indian Seas, St John's was named 'Sikajang Island' and Lazarus Island was labelled 'St John's Island'.Shaw, N. "I. British Settlements in the Malay Peninsula and Coast of Borneo." In British Possessions In The Indian Seas. The Royal Illustrated Atlas, Of Modern Geography With An Introductory Notice. London and Edinburgh : A. Fullarton & Co, . p. 42. http://purl.stanford.edu/xm109vn4303 Eventually, St John's Island's Malay name became , with the term meaning flag in Malay, which is attributed to a flagstaff that existed on the island from 1823 to 1833. East St John's was later officially renamed 'Lazarus Island', also known as 'Convalescent Island', after a beriberi hospital was built there in 1899. Lazarus Island is now known as in Malay, with meaning 'palm leaves'.
The original Chinese name of St John's is (), meaning Mount Qizhang, which refers to a hill at the centre of the island. It is a transliteration of . Its Chinese name was later officially replaced with a translation of its English name, 'St John's Island' (Chinese: 圣约翰岛; pinyin: Shèngyuēhàndǎo).
History Early colonial history
On 28 January 1819, a delegation led by colonial official Sir Stamford Raffles anchored off St John's, a day before they arrived at mainland Singapore to establish a British trading port."Arrival at Singapore." Raffles' Letters: Intrigues Behind the Founding of Singapore. National Library Gallery. 29 August 2012 to 28 February 2013. After the port was established that year, a signal station was constructed on St John's Island, along with a signal flagstaff. The signal station informed passing ships in the Straits of Singapore of the new port. It was also tasked to operate the flagstaff to report ship sightings to the signal post on Government Hill in mainland Singapore.
By 1830, the facilities on St John's Island, including the flagstaff, were reported by the officer in charge of public works to be in a dilapidated state.Military Secretary. "Letter to the Governor." 12 March 1830. A68: Singapore Consultations. p. 109. Raffles Museum and Library. Retrieved 8 February 2023. They were not repaired because the government did not plan to continue the St John's signal station. The flagstaff on St John's was moved to Mount Faber in 1833. Visitors to the island in subsequent years such as naturalist George Bennett and Dr Robert Little found it to be virtually abandoned, with only one Malay inhabitant.
Quarantine centre
As the number of immigrants to Singapore increased from the late 19th century onwards, the risk of epidemics heightened, leading to the establishment of a Quarantine Centre on St John's. Initially, the Quarantine Ordinance (No. 7 of 1868) was implemented to prohibit all infected ships from docking at port. However, in July 1873, a boat from Bangkok caused a cholera epidemic that lasted two months and resulted in 857 infections and 448 deaths, despite the orders of Governor Harry Ord to quarantine all ships from Siam. Consequently, Acting Master Attendant Henry Ellis proposed that a quarantine station be constructed on St John's Island. Governor Harry Ord officially approved the proposal in a speech at the Legislative Council on 21 March 1874.
The St John's Island quarantine station opened in November 1874 and served not just immigrants to Singapore but also Muslims returning to Malaya after their pilgrimage to Mecca. Although Ellis had plans for a police ship, a hospital on St John's, a steam cutter, and a cemetery on Kusu Island to support the quarantine station, it consisted largely of attap huts when first completed. The month it opened, the station quarantined more than 1,000 Chinese passengers on the cholera-infected SS Milton which was travelling from Swatow to the British colonies Penang and Province Wellesley. In 1890, Muslims on the Queen Margaret who were returning after their Hajj pilgrimage were quarantined on St John's. In 1894, the Hong Kong outbreak of bubonic plague prompted the Quarantine Station to prepare to receive bubonic plague victims. A plague hospital was constructed and ships were inspected, with one case of bubonic plague caught in March 1896.
Aside from the addition of the plague hospital, more facilities were added when the station was further redeveloped. From 1903 onwards, more than 300,000 dollars was spent on the station's development. New facilities included muster sheds for passengers to disinfect and change clothes, and boiler houses for disinfecting belongings. Other facilities include a coroner's court; a police station, jail and Sikh police barracks; a post office; storehouses of loose sulphur for fumigating ships; a temple and a mosque; quarters for workers. Additionally, a burial ground for the quarantine station's deceased was sited on Lazarus Island.
The improved facilities came in time to also serve as emergency accommodations in 1911 for the rising number of beriberi victims in the late 1890s and early 1900s. In August 1911, the overflow patients and beriberi victims in Tan Tock Seng Hospital were quarantined on St John's as one of the beriberi patients had been infected by a cholera outbreak.
In the early 20th century, the quarantine centre was further equipped and had become one of the largest quarantine operations in the British Empire. By 1924, the St John's Island quarantine station had a maximum capacity of 6,000 people. Between 1903 and 1923, the station inspected approximately 8 million people and quarantined 300,000. A model of the quarantine station was featured at the Malaya Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition held in Wembley in April 1924. By 1930, the quarantine station was capable of vaccination and was equipped with a dispensary, telephone wires, and disinfection buildings with Izal solution spray.
Despite the quarantine laws and the island's treatment facilities, not all passengers were quarantined nor received the same level of care due to classism. Unlike steerage class passengers, cabin class (first and second-class) passengers were not required to undergo quarantine. Health examinations for sailors were also less demanding. By contrast, Chinese coolies were allegedly provided insufficient food, no bedding and used as forced labour. Complaints were made to no avail.
The St John's quarantine station officially closed on 14 January 1976 because the popularisation of air travel had drastically reduced the number of arrivals by boat.
Detention centre
St John's Island served as a World War I and World War II internment camp. In August 1914, right after World War I began, most German men in Singapore were interned on St John's Island and Tanglin Barracks while women and children were detained in Kuala Lumpur. Enemy combatants were also imprisoned on the island, including the crew of and the Greek collier , which was captured by the Germans. By 1916, a total of 296 enemy nationals had been transferred from St John's to Australia . During World War II (1939–1945), enemy foreign nationals—some of whom were fleeing Nazism—were interned at St John's Island in 1940. Of these, the Germans who were to be removed from the war were interned in Ceylon. As for the rest, some were deported to neutral grounds like Shanghai. Others were transported to Australia, including German-Jewish and his family. Separately, the Japanese subsequently allied with the Germans and invaded Malaya. Shortly after, the Japanese women and children in Singapore were also interned on St John's Island from late 1941 to 1942 before being shipped to Calcutta. When the Japanese occupation of Malaya during World War II began, Allied prisoners of war were detained on St John's.
The Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) sparked by the Communist Party of Malaya caused St John's to resume operating as a detention centre for political prisoners. In 1947, the Communist Party of Malaya initiated a guerilla war against the British colonial government in hopes that it would be more effective in turning the Federation of Malaya and the Crown Colony of Singapore communist. Fatal attacks committed in the Federation of Malaya in June 1948 as part of this war culminated in the British colonial government declaring a state of emergency, thus enacting the Essential Regulations Proclamation on 24 June. This granted the government the authority to arrest and detain anyone without trial. Expecting an influx of political prisoners, St John's Island was officially announced as the site of the new detention centre on 3 July 1948 and became a protected area from 10 September onward.
St John's housed not only communists but also political suspects and detainees of other political leanings, from both Malaya and Singapore, who sought to overthrow the colonial government. St John's received its first batch of detainees on 20 September 1948, comprising 200 political prisoners from Johore Bahru. Travellers via ship suspected of communist inclinations were also detained at St John's under the Emergency Travel Restrictions Regulations until they were cleared of suspicion. Within two years, more than 600 were detained under the Emergency Regulations, most of whom were held on St John's. Singaporean political prisoners detained on St John's Island were university students, teachers, newspaper editors, several future politicians of Singapore, and others. Among the detainees were Devan Nair, Fong Swee Suan and Lim Chin Siong, all People's Action Party (PAP) members. They were released in 1959 after Singapore was granted full internal self-government and the PAP won the 1959 Singapore general election.