[2] As well as flints and fossils, Jack made and sold fake ancient British and Roman urns.

He is also reported to have successfully sold a genuine-looking Roman breastplate (pectorale) in Malton, made out of an old tea-tray and fashioned on his own body.

The professor, fascinated by the hard-to-detect forgeries, persuaded Jack to describe his manufacturing methods to members of the Geological and Archaeological Societies.

'"Flint Jack – A notorious Yorkshireman – one of the greatest impostors of our times – was last week sentenced to 12 months imprisonment for felony at Bedford.

Under one or other of these designations Edward Simpson is known throughout England, Scotland and Ireland – in fact, wherever geologists or archaeologists resided, or wherever a museum was established, there did Flint Jack assuredly pass off his forged fossils and antiquities.

[4] An 1871 edition of The Antiquary warned of his presence in North Yorkshire and noted that "His present trade is the vending of arrow-heads made of bottle-glass, which he works with even more skill than flint,[6] and which he is disposing of by the score", warnings were also published of his presence in Stamford where he was making flints, monastic seals and rings,[7] and noted his incarceration for a month at Northallerton.

The exhibition, held in the Henry Moore Institute was created by the artist Sean Lynch and titled 'The Rise and Fall of Flint Jack'.