The original expression, meaning off one's head or mad, was DOOLALLY TAP
("tap" meaning fever in Hindustani).
Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1982 1-vol ed.,
Supplement) prints the following passage from Old-Soldier Sahib by Frank
Richards (1936) :
"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 troopship 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 [sic] and had to go to hospital. The well-known saying
among soldiers when speaking of a man who 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."
The custom of sending time-expired men to Deolalie had been abolished by
1909, when Richards became time-expired. I well remember an old friend of my
father's, who must have been born about 1895, saying "He's got the Doolally
tap" about people he regarded as eccentric or "potty".
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