(1) Arumaninathan, P., Report on the Census of Population 1970, Singapore (Singapore, Department of Statistics, 1973)Google Scholar.

(2) Seng, You Poh, The Population Growth of Singapore, Malayan Economic Review, IV (1959), 56–69Google Scholar.

(3) Singapore, Sample Household Survey 1966—Report No. 1 (Singapore, The Government Printing Office, 1967)Google Scholar.

(4) Arumaninathan, op. cit. pp. 249–250.

(5) Cheng-Tung, Chang, The changing socio-demographic profile, in Hassan, Riaz (ed.), Singapore: society in transition (London, Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 277Google Scholar.

(6) Hassan, Riaz, Interethnic marriage in Singapore: a sociological analysis, Sociology and Social Research, LV (1971), p. 3Google Scholar.

7. Chang Cheng-Tung, op. cit. p. 276.

(8) World Health Organization, Suicide and Attempted Suicide, W. H. O. Public Health Paper 58, Geneva 1974Google Scholar.

(9) See Administration Reports of the Singapore Municipality for the years 1900–1930, and Reports on the Registration of Births and Deaths and Marriages 1940–1974, published by the Registrar General of Births and Deaths, SingaporeGoogle Scholar.

(10) For a detailed discussion of the processes of social, economic, political and spatial transformation of Singapore see Hassan, Riaz (ed.), Singapore: Society in transition (Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1975)Google Scholar. For the social effects of urban renewal, relocation and public housing see Hassan, Riaz, Families in Flats (Singapore, Singapore University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

(11) For a good discussion of Chinese religion see Vivienne Wee, Buddhism in Singapore, in Riaz Hassan (ed.), Singapore: society in transition, op. cit.

(12) As the category ‘others’ in Singapore includes several ethnic groups and not one, it is, therefore, excluded from discussion of the cultural meaning of suicide and consequently discussion is limited to only three principal ethnic groups which make up over ninety-eight percent of Singapore's population.

(13) New edition: London 1910, quoted in Maclagen, P. J., Suicide (Chinese) in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by Hastings, James (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons), Vol. XII, p. 26Google Scholar.

(14) The discussion of the Chinese concept ‘face’ relies heavily on Hu, Hsien Chien, The Chinese Concept of Face, American Anthropologist, XLVI (1944), 45–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(15) Loss of ‘face’ in fact operates in a wide variety of social situations. For example in the case of Chinese women premarital sexual relationship evokes strong condemnation. Virginity of the bride is mandatory. A bride who is discovered not to be a virgin brings shame and dishonour, or loss of face, to her natal family. Although concerted community sanctions are difficult to impose on errant women, these of highrise living in Singapore, gossip and sometimes ostracism may be levelled women who are thought to be ‘cheap’, i.e., who engage in sexual intercourse outside legally sanctioned unions. For further discussion of this point, see Freedman, M., Chinese Family and Marriage Singapore, H.M.S.O. (London 1970), p. 137Google Scholar and Hassan, Riaz, Ethnicity, Culture Fertility (Singapore, Chopman, 1980), pp. 16–18Google Scholar.

(16) Rao, Venkoba, Suicide in India, in Farberow, Norman L. (ed.), Suicide in Different Cultures (Baltimore, University Park Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

(17) Rao, op. cit.

(18) Keith, A. Berriedale, Suicide (Hindu), in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, op. cit. XII, pp. 33–35Google Scholar.

(19) Sati was self-immolation of a widow over the funeral pyre of her husband. This custom was not indigenous to India, it happened in China and, according to Herodotus, it was common amongst the Scythians and Thracians. The Rig Veda originally did not condemn sati—it later became institutionalized and received the sanction of religion, for priests taught that voluntary death was the surest passport to heaven and that by immolating herself, the dutiful wife would atone for the sins of her husband, free him from punishment, and open the gates of paradise to him. Furthermore, the families and relatives on both sides of the house shared in the merit of her sacrifice, and the children whose mother committed sati gained social distinction. In time, and because of abuse and foreign rule, this custom was looked upon as a social evil and finally, in 1892, legislation was passed declaring sati illegal. However, as Basham points out, the ritual of sati was not necessarily performed by the widows for altruistic reasons. In families which adhered to the Hindu customary law the lot of the widow was indeed very hard. ‘[…] a widow was inauspicious to every one but her own children. Wherever she went her presence cast a gloom about her. She could never attend the family festivals which played so big a part in Hindu life, for she would bring bad luck on all present. She remained a member of her husband's family, and could never return to her father. Always watched by the parents and relatives of her lord, lest she broke her vows and imperilled the dead man's spiritual welfare, shunned as unlucky even by the servants, her life must often have been miserable in the extreme. In these circumstances it is not surprising that women often immolated themselves on their husband's funeral pyres […]’. Basham, A. L., The Wonder That Was India (London, Fontana & Collins, 1971), p. 188Google Scholar.

(20) See Rao, op. cit., and for reference to the role of caste in marriage and other aspects of social life in Singapore, see Mani, A., The Changing Caste Structure Amongst the Singapore Indians, unpublished M. Soc. Sci. thesis, University of Singapore, 1977Google Scholar.

(21) For a detailed discussion of caste among Singapore Indians, see A. Mani, ibid.

(22) Patton, Walter M., Suicide (Muhamtnadan) in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, op. cit., XII, p. 38Google Scholar.

(23) Patton, op. cit.

(24) For a detailed discussion of Malay attitudes towards divorce, and remarriage, see Hassan, , Ethnicity, Culture and Fertility, op. cit. pp. 76–80Google Scholar, and Djamour, Judith, Malay Kinship and Marriage in Singapore (London, The Athlone Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

(25) Durkheim, É., Suicide (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1951)Google Scholar.

(26) The reader, however, should bear in mind that the information about marital status as reported in the coroner's cases (on which this study is based) becomes increasingly less reliable in the case suicide committed by persons 50 years and above. The data reported for categories below 50 years, therefore, more reliable as it was usually possible ascertain more or less accurately from evidence of the deceased's relatives their marital status. But after 50 years, as very significant number of cases tended to be born outside Singapore, it becomes progressively difficult to ascertain their marital status correctly from the coroner's case files. There are for example an indeterminate number of persons in the older age categories who were married with spouses residing in India or China, In such cases it was usually difficult to ascertain correctly what the marital status at the time of their suicide was and even in cases where the marital status could be ascertained, particularly if they were married, sociologically it would appear to be less meaningful, for at the time of death they did not have the security of the ‘family society’. For purposes of this study, the reader should bear in mind the limitations of data reported in Table 4.

(27) Durkhbim, op. cit., Henry, A. F., and Short, J. F., Suicide and Homicide (Glencoe. The Free Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Gibbs, J. P., and Martin, W. T., Status Integration and Suicide (Oregon, Oregon University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

(28) Gibbs and Martin, op. cit.

(29) The Singapore Census Bureau uses only the following categories to classify the marital status of the population: single, married, widowed and divorced. There is no category ‘separated’. This to some extent reinforces the arguments about the normative emphasis on being married, The absence of this category also has made it impossible to report suicide rates for the ‘separated’. There were twenty-four cases or three per cent of all suicide cases which involved persons who, as far as I could ascertain, were separated from their respective spouses at the times of suicide, These cases, along with fourty-one cases whose marital status could not be ascertained with any degree of reliability, have been excluded from Table 5.

(30) For a discussion of the changing role of woman in Singapore, see Wong, Aline K., Women in Modern Singapore (Singapore, University Education Press, 1975)Google Scholar; and Kuo, Eddie C. Y. and Wong, Aline (eds.), The Contemporary Family in Singapore (Singapore, Singapore University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

(31) For example, see Harvey W. Zorbough, The Natural areas of the city, Walter C. Reckless, The distribution of commercialized vice in the city. A sociological study, and Dunham, H. Warren, The ecology of functional psychosis in Chicago, in Theodorson, George A. (ed.), Studies in Human Ecology (New York, Harper and Row, 1961)Google Scholar.

(32) For details of methodology used in ranking of the social areas and geographical distributions of the social areas see Weldon, Peter D. and Huang, Tan Tsu, The Socio-economic Characteristics of Singapore's Population, Technical Paper No. 10, State and City Planning Department, Republic of Singapore, 1970Google Scholar.

(33) Here I am referring to all 1968 suicide cases for which data were collected from the Coroner's Court record files.

* This paper is part of a larger study on Social Correlates of Suicide. The study is supported by Flinders University Research Committee Grant No. 249. The author is grateful to the Registrar of the High Court of Singapore for permission to consult coroners' court records and to the State Coroner's Court (Republic of Singapore) for its co-operation and assistance. The author would like to thank Joan Percival, Joseph Smith, Francis Robertson, Rosemary McKenna and Vivienne Hope for their research assistance. He is also grateful to Dr. Lance Brennan and Dr. Lincoln H. Day for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The author, however, is alone responsible for the contents of this paper.