In +Service Slang+ (1943), collected by J.L.Hunt and A.G.Pringle, we have:
DOOLALLY: Very drunk or temporarily insane, without distinction.
There's a long entry in Beale/Partridge 8:
(Scanned and OCRed but not proofed):
doolally (or doolali). (Orig., and still, very occ. among old soldiers, the
full form was/is doolally tap.) Off one's head; mad; 'he's gone doolally':
orig., late C.19-mid-20, army s.; since then, much more widespread, and >
gen. coll.; the abbr. doolally dates from ca. 1920; the occ. corrupt
variants doodle-ally or doodally have crept in since ca. 1940. One
derivation is ex Deolali, a military sanatorium in Bombay, and Hindustani
tap, fever; however, the following long passage from Frank Richards, DCM,
MM, Old Soldier Sahib, 1936, is worth quoting in full:
'The trooping season began in October and finished in
March, so that time-expired men sent to Deolalie from their different units
might have to wait for months before a troop-ship fetched them home ... The
time-expired men at Deolalie had no arms or equipment; they showed kit now
and again and occasionally went on a route-march, but time hung heavily on
their hands and in some cases men who had been exemplary soldiers got into
serious trouble and were awarded terms of imprisonment before they were sent
home. Others contracted venereal and had to go to hospital. The well-known
saying among soldiers when speaking of a man who does queer things, "Oh,
he's got the Doo-lally tap," originated, I think, in the peculiar way men
behaved owing to the boredom of that camp. Before I was time-expired myself
(in 1909) the custom of sending time-expired men to Deolalie was abolished:
they were sent direct to the ports of embarkation, which in some cases meant
weeks of travelling, but they got on the troop-ship the day they arrived at
the port.'
(This author's knowledge of s. in the Army ranks of the early
C.20 is prob. unrivalled.)-2. Hence, exceedingly drunk: army: from ca. 1930;
by ca. 1950, ob. if not t. H. & P.-3. Of a machine, e.g., a vehicle, out of
action, broken down: heard from a London bus conductor, 1983. (Mrs C. Raab.)
Loosely ex sense 1.
doolally-trapped. Knocked silly: low: from 1918; t. doolan. A policeman:
Aus.: C.20. (D'Arcy Niland, The Big Smoke, 1959.) Prob. ex the Irish surname
Doolan, there being so many Irishmen in the police force.
dooley. See Larry Dooley.
doolie. An ambulance: Anglo-Indian coll.: C.18-20. Ex the S.E. sense, a
litter or a rudimentary palanquin (C.16+). Y. & B.
A Hang Down Your Head Tom Doolally Rodent
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 9:37 PM
Subject: Re: help!-----lost word
>A small footnote to the doolally observations.
>
> Although the Deolali camp is often cited as the source, the (British run)
> asylum, also in Deolali, is (I suspect) more probable. 'Ranchi' (< a later
> asylum) is sometimes used in Indian English where a Briton might mutter
> 'doolally'.
>
> Doolally doesn't appear in Hobson Jobson, which surprised me.
>
> CW
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> 'Think of a book inflicted on its author...' (Alan Sondheim)
>
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