"
skinny (= miserly) 1833 (So, it got that definition just in time!)"
The word skinflint has a longer predigree - origin-of-skinflint
The phrase to skin a flint is first recorded in one of the poems introducing the 1656 edition (London) of The Legend of Captain Jones. ....
Jones was one
Would Skinne a Flint, and eat him when h’had done.

Next question, what or who is a flint? I'd always imagined a flint for striking a light, but would you call that 'him'?