Temple, Lewis

TEMPLE, LEWIS (22 October 1800–18 May 1854), African American inventor, blacksmith, and abolitionist. Temple was born into slavery in Richmond, Virginia, but moved during the 1820s to the whaling village of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he worked as a blacksmith at Coffin’s Wharf. In 1834 Lewis was elected vice president of the New Bedford Union Society, the village’s first antislavery organization and a Black auxiliary to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In his Walnut Street shop in New Bedford, Temple invented what is now known as the Temple toggle iron harpoon tip, which had a pivoting head that was designed to embed itself more securely in a whale’s flesh. At the time the invention was known as “Temple’s Toggle” or “Temple’s Iron” and was said to be based on the harpoon tips of the Eskimo and other Indigenous communities that were brought back to New England by various whalers. Temple never patented his invention, but nonetheless lived modestly well. In 1853 he fell through an open sewer trench and was badly injured. He died six weeks later in May 1854.