Many of the British style chests use rivets for part of the retention of things like the rope handle blocks, hinges and hasps. In some cases, it was to prevent opening a locked box by simply removing some of the screws.
I would agree that the stamped corners would be to make them thicker for the use of the flat headed screws. It may have been a way to save metal. If you think about it, how many miles of metal strip twice the thickness would have been used otherwise to build crates. I have a large number of the bren chests here, and they simply used the heavier metal with countersunk holes for the corners.
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