The People's Songbag

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31143, 20 August 1966, Page 13

The People's Songbag

Tom Dooley

rsoectallu written for The

Press" by

DEREK ROONEY.]

Hang down your head Tom Dooley, Hang down your head and cry; You killed poor Laura Foster, And now you’re bound to die.

“The Ballad of Tom Dooley,” in a relatively unretouched version, enjoyed no small success as a pop tune a handful of years ago—just as, not a century earlier, the crime of passion which gave rise to it became no less widely known as a cause celebre.

Tom Dooley (real name: Thomas C. Dula) was a Civil War hero on the Confederate side, from North Carolina; and it was probably this, rather than the scendalous aspects of the case, which drew nation-wide attention to his conviction and execution for the murder of Laura Foster in May, 1868. The body of Laura was found on a hillside in Wilkes

County, North Carolina, and suspicion immediately fell on Dula, her former boy-friend, although the evidence was mainly circumstantial (and some who have studied the case still believe he was innocent). However, the North Carolina Supreme Court had no doubt about his guilt. It found that Dula and Laura had an affair, that Dula transferred his affections to one Ann Melton and, for a time at least, was paying court to both. Dula contracted venereal disease, passed it on to Ann, and blamed Laura for it; so he stabbed her.

There was some suspicion that Ann was an accomplice in the crime, but not proof, and she was never convicted. The case drew wide attention and the “New York Herald” sent a reporter to Wilkes County to interview Dula in his condemned cell. He wrote, inter alia: “Thomas Dula. the condemn-

ed man, is about 25 years old, sft Ilin high, dark eyes, dark curly hair, and though not handsome might be called good-looking. He fought gallantly in the Confederate service, where he established a reputation for bravery, but since the war closed has become reckless, demoralised and a desperado, of whom the people in this community had a terror. “There is everything in his expression to indicate the hardened assassin—a fierce glare of the eyes, a great deal of malignity and a callousness that is revolting.” And this is more or less the judgment passed on Dula by the popular version of the ballad; however, two other versions are less unkind, one presenting him quite dogmatically as an innocent and harmless man wrongly judged by his peers.

No Longer.—France is no longer the mirror of intelligence, of art, of good taste, of literature. . . She is no longer for the world the pace-setter in the theatre or in fashion. Nor even does she lead in non-conformism, frivolity or low life.—The Milan daily, “Corriere della Sera,” in a supplement on France.