Allen Buckley related to me that at South Crofty there was a general reluctance by the miners, to give up their carbide lamps in favour of the new fangled ’lectric’ ones, to the point where many were deliberately damaged,in an effort to persuade management that they were unreliable.
Those early Oldham’s / CEAGS used to leak like sieves.
The lamp belts sold by the likes of Cornish Industrial Supply when I arrived in Camborne in the early 70s, were provided with a felt pad which absorbed spills from the battery... they didn’t actually leak, but tended to dribble from the vent holes if laid down, laid on their sides or upside down, or simply overcharged - which would commonly be done in an attempt to keep older lamps in use.
There was also no real way of checking fluid levels. Lamp room hands would inject a “best guess” level through the vent holes with a pipette, which turned out much as you might expect.
The T Type, and later translucent cases were far superior in that respect.
I don’t doubt that trying to introduce new technology in an industry which had at that time, stagnated since the 1920s and been largely moribund since the 1940s, in a place like West Cornwall, was a thankless task.
Using Oldham and CEAG lamps for caving in the 70s, we used to plug the vents with the plastic caps from the bodies of biro pens, otherwise they would progressively fill with cave water, with predictable effects...