Career
Originally a shoemaker by trade, he was active on the book-trading market from 1680 in and around Holborn, travelling to Haarlem, Leiden, and Amsterdam on this business and aiding such collectors as John Moore, Robert and Edward Harley, Sir Hans Sloane, Samuel Pepys and John Woodward. In 1715 Bagford wrote about the Gray"s Inn Lane hand axe and the elephant tooth which had been found together by John Conyers opposite "Black Mary"s". He asserted that the elephant was probably introduced by Claudius but that the tool had been made by human workmanship.
He described this as a "British weapon" and as such he was one of the first to suggest that stone age tools were human-made, rather than produced by other causes (such as lightning).
