It’s been a lot of years since everybody at the mine carried an oil lamp, but in later years everybody carried one of these. The first ones I remember having had a very poorly designed filler plug and were terrible for leaking. Within a couple of weeks, the back of a new jacket would rot through. If you could get someone in the workshops, for 20 cigs, they would strip 3 or 4 plies from an old piece of belt, and rivet it together to make a pouch. The Lampman would remove the belt clip for you to make it a good fit. The lamps pictured did not have the removable steel belt clip, they’d progressed to moulded loops on the battery.
As far as I know, there were 9 different colour bezels for the lamps and a variety of coloured helmets. Some collieries I believe, tried to introduce a colour code, made up of a combination of the colours of lamps and helmets to identify the workforce, with regard to who and what they were. I never heard of one that was successful.
– Information provided by Bosuns Mate.