Definition of "lamplighter"

1,000 crossing-sweepers; another thousand chimney-sweeps, and the same number of turncocks and lamp-lighters;

1851, Henry Mayhew, “Costermongers”, in London Labour and the London Poor

I did the hurdles over two or three garden-walls, but so did the flyer who was on my tracks, and he drove me back into the straight and down to High Street like any lamplighter.

1905, E. W. Hornung, A Thief in the Night

[…] and finally, laughing and all tired out, they stopped to rest and to think of some other game. They played “Buz” till they were rested, and then “Genteel Lady,” where every time a little girl made a mistake she had to have a lamplighter stuck in her hair.

1876, Ballou's Monthly Magazine, volume 44, page 590