466 
MR. W. G. CLARKE ON “FLINT JACK.” 
an old tea-tray, at Pickering, he fashioned a Roman breastplate, 
which he sold without difficulty. A Roman milestone having then 
recently been found, “Jack” fashioned one out of a slab, lettering, 
grinding, chipping, and then burying the stone for subsequent 
exhumation. This was sold to a medical gentleman for £ 5 . He 
made other inscribed stones, one of which was for long a puzzle 
to antiquarians. 
In 1846 Edward Simpson took to immoderate drinking, and 
remained in poverty to the end of his life. He made a flint comb, 
which the antiquaries of that day thought might have been used for 
tattooing. The same year (1846) he started on his first tour. At Hull, 
he sold a spurious axe to the Mechanics’ Institute ; at Lincoln, 
spurious implements to the museum ; at Newark, he first began 
making fossils ; and at Cambridge, he deceived the curator of the 
Geological Museum and a local optician with fossils supposed to 
have come from the chalk and greensand. He also visited, on this 
tour, Newmarket, Brandon, Thetford, Norwich, Yarmouth, Ipswich, 
and Colchester. In the neighbourhood of Yarmouth, he made the 
acquaintance of an “ arclueological parson, easy to do,” who gave 
an unlimited order for British or Roman antiquities. “ Jack ” 
soon produced a valuable assortment, with forms quite unique, 
the invention of his own fertile brain. At Colchester, he fell in 
with a travelling Jew, whom “ Flint Jack ” duped wholesale. 
From thence he went to London, and made the acquaintance of 
Mr. Tennant of the Strand, to whom he sold spurious fossils, 
flints, and antiquities. On his own confession, he also deceived 
the British Museum folk. He remained in London a year, and 
at length feared the museums might become overcharged with his 
implements. He also made spurious fibulae, coins, seals, rings, 
leaden antiques, jet seals and necklaces. 
Upon returning to Yorkshire he, for twelve months, collected 
genuine chalk fossils for the York Museum. At length, one day, 
at North Shields, he found flint among the shingle, and started 
on his old life again, doing good trade at Durham. The following 
year he went to Ireland, and in 1852 again set out for London. 
At Bottesford he found an open quarry of lias, and stopped 
there some time collecting fossils. He sent his first basketful 
to a clergyman at Peterborough, who had befriended him — 
gratitude being a redeeming trait in “Flint Jack’s” character. 
