Secretum (British Museum)

Former collection in the British Museum

The Secretum (Latin for "hidden away") was a British Museum collection of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that held artefacts and images deemed sexually graphic. Many of the items were amulets, charms and votive offerings, often from pre Christian traditions, including the worship of Priapus, a Greco Roman god of fertility and male genitalia. Items from other cultures covered wide ranges of human history, including ancient Egypt, the classical era Greco Roman world, the ancient Near East, medieval England, Japan and India. Many of the early donations or sales to the museum, including those from the collectors Sir Hans Sloane, Sir William Hamilton, Richard Payne Knight and Charles Townley, contained items with erotic or sexually graphic images; these were separated out by museum staff and not put on public display. Modern scholars believe the segregation was probably motivated by a paternalistic stance from the museum to keep what they considered morally dangerous material away from all except scholars and members of the clergy. By the 1860s there were around 700 such items held by the museum. In 1865 the antiquarian George Witt donated his phallocentric collection of 434 artefacts to the museum, which led to the formal setting up of the Secretum to hold his collection and similar items. The Secretum collection began to be gradually broken up in 1912, with the transfer of items into departments appropriate for their time frame and culture. The last entry into the Secretum was in 1953, when the British Library found 18th century condoms being used as bookmarks in a 1783 publication they held. The last remaining items were moved out of the collection in 2005.

The British Museum Act created the British Museum in June 1753. The Act provided for the purchase of the collection of the physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane; the Cotton library, assembled by the antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton; and the Harleian Library, the collection of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. It was intended as a resource for "all studious and curious persons" and was the world's first free access national museum. Collectors of classical artefacts donated or sold their acquisitions to the museum, including major works, such as the Elgin Marbles in 1816. The library holdings of the British Museum—which were separated from the Museum to form the British Library in 1973—separated any obscene or pornographic publications in the nineteenth century. Although there is no agreed date when this began, the informal practice of locking away such works was in place by at least 1836. The practice eventually became formalised as the Private Case; dates between 1841 and 1870 have been suggested for its inception. The practice of separating works away from publicly accessible collections had an antecedent in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples—the museum whose collection includes Roman artefacts from the nearby Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum sites—whose Secret Cabinet (Italian: Gabinetto Segreto) contained the erotic works found in those locations.

From its early days the British Museum's acquisitions included articles that displayed erotic or sexually graphic images. Among Sloane's donations, for example, were three lamps: one depicting a dancer showing his large phallus swinging behind him, according to the museum's catalogue; one showing a woman and a monkey engaged in intercourse; and one showing an ass having sex with a lion. Subsequently acquired collections with sexually graphic images included that of Sir William Hamilton, who sold part of his collection to the museum in 1772 for £8,400, and later made further donations. Hamilton's donation included votive wax phalluses from the Italian town Isernia. The classical scholar and collector Richard Payne Knight's study of pre Christian cultures included much on the subject of Priapus, a Greco Roman god of fertility and male genitalia. In 1786 he published an examination of pagan beliefs and practices in A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients. He had collected widely in his studies, and when he died in 1824 his acquisitions were bequeathed to the British Museum. Comprising more than 1,140 drawings, 800 bronzes and in excess of 5,200 coins, their value was estimated at either "at least £30,000" or £50,000. The antiquarian Charles Townley sold his classical sculpture collection to the museum in 1805, and the remainder was bequeathed to his cousin, Peregrine, who then sold it to the museum. Townley's collection included a statue of a nymph and satyr that depicts either sexual play or a possible attempted rape, a statue of Pan having sex with a goat and an erotic frieze from an Indian tantra temple. The erotically charged or sexually graphic images from collections of Hamilton, Knight and Townley were from ancient Egypt, the Greco Roman world and the ancient Near East. These items were separated from the rest of the donations and stored apart from the museum's public displays. Further material with sexual imagery was deposited in the collection in the 1840s and 1850s.

Although from its inception the British Museum had separated out the material considered obscene, the Secretum (Latin for "hidden away") was only formally founded in 1865. The Secretum came under the auspices of the museum's Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography, headed by Augustus Wollaston Franks. At that point it comprised about 700 items. In 1865 George Witt, a collector of antiquities, suffered a bad illness; on his recovery, he wrote to Anthony Panizzi, the head of the British Museum, offering his phallocentric collection of 434 artefacts:

During my late severe illness it was a source of much regret to me that I had not made such a disposition of my Collection of "Symbols of the Early Worship of Mankind", as, combined with its due preservation, would have enabled me in some measure to have superintended its arrangement. In accordance with this feeling I now propose to present my collection to the British Museum, with the hope that some small room may be appointed for its reception in which may also be deposited and arranged the important specimens, already in the vaults of the Museum—and elsewhere, which are illustrative of the same subject. Witt's interest lay in phallicism and fertility in pre Christian societies, particularly on the worship of Priapus. Witt believed that all pre Christian cultures possessed a common religious background which venerated fertility deities, according to the archaeologist and museum executive David Gaimster, and Witt included with his donation a self published pamphlet Catalogue of a Collection Illustrative of Phallic Worship. Also included in Witt's acquisitions were artefacts from Greek, Egyptian and Roman antiquity, reliefs from Indian temples, medieval items and nine bound scrapbooks containing prints and watercolours of fertility related objects from cultures around the world. The archaeologist Helen Wickstead describes the scrapbooks as being "among the world’s most valuable resources for investigating the history of archaeologies of sexuality". Many of the items in the Witt collection were good luck amulets, often shaped as or displaying winged phalluses. He also donated works of —Japanese erotic art—the first of that style held by the museum and what he thought was a medieval chastity belt, although this was a fake manufactured in Victorian times. In 2000 the journalist Laura Thomas observed that Witt "did not care to place  [his collection] in any cultural or chronological milieu. Regardless of provenance  [he] selected the pieces for their obscenity value alone". According to Gaimster, the Secretum "took on its official status" with Witt's donation. The British Museum did not promote its ownership of the Secretum and access to it was restricted to clergymen and scholars; they would have to apply by letter to the director of the museum giving details of their credentials and a valid reason why they wanted to access the collection. One application—made in 1948—was from a scholar who requested a copy of the collection's register; he was asked to explain "his qualifications for the study of the catalogue, the use he proposed to make of the photostats, and the arrangements made for the disposal thereof at his death". The classicist Jen Grove considers that rather than being embarrassed by its ownership of salacious and pornographic material, the British Museum actively and systematically sought out sexual antiquities, either to add to the Secretum or into their main holdings. This enthusiastic acquisition continued from the nineteenth into the twentieth century, including the period from 1912 when the Secretum collection was being broken up and transferred to other departments within the museum. Grove notes that while some of the acquired items were entered into the Secretum, many were not, but instead went into the museum department appropriate for their time frame and culture.

Objects began to be released from the Secretum early in the twentieth century, with some artefacts transferred to the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in 1912. There was further transfer of items out of the collection from 1937 onwards, although the museum continued to add to the collection. The last entry into the Secretum was in 1953, when the British Library passed to the museum some 18th century condoms that had been used as bookmarks in the 1783 publication A Guide to Health, Beauty, Riches and Honour. The condoms were made of sheep intestines, with drawstrings at the open end to seal and secure them. After 1953 any new items acquired by the museum with erotic content were stored within or displayed by the department relevant for their time frame and culture. During the 1960s the curatorship of the Secretum was moved to the newly formed Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities, where they were housed in locked cupboards 55 and 54 of the museum; "Cupboard 55" became one of the nicknames by which the Secretum was known. The collection was gradually reduced over time by transferring items to the relevant department and in 2000 it contained around 200 of Witt's donations and 100 items from pre 1865 donations. In 2002 one of the collection's curators said "what's left in the Secretum now is fairly pathetic. It's kept here because it's second rate and not worthy of display anywhere else". By 2005 the last remaining items had been redistributed, although there were still some erotic prints and cartoons locked in cupboard 205 of the Department of Prints and Drawings in 2009. From the 1970s onwards, when Roman vases depicting [[wikt:ithyphallic (from the Latin for "erect penises") were placed in the main displays, the British Museum chose to display sexually explicit objects integrated into its main displays, in contrast with the Neapolitan National Archaeological Museum, which segregated them into a single room with warning signs on entry.

Some classicists and curators—including Gaimster and the archaeologist and museum curator Catherine Johns—have written that what Johns calls "Victorian prudery" was behind the decision to segregate the sexually graphic items from the main collection. Gaimster observes that such a classification was, therefore, not on an academic basis, but a moral one; Johns considers that classifying artefacts on grounds of obscenity is "academically indefensible" and that there is no scholarly basis to label any object as obscene. The art curator Marina Wallace also considers that a paternalistic approach was behind the decision, and that the censorship of items was made by educated men, who thought themselves able to study artefacts that displayed erotic or sexually graphic images without offence or the danger of moral corruption, whereas the images would "offend the weaker members of society, that is to say, children, women and the working classes". Gaimster notes that the Secretum was formally started soon after the introduction of the Obscene Publications Act 1857. The legislation made no allowances for the educational nature of the material, and in 1860 an anatomical museum in Leeds was prosecuted under the act and the anatomical models were destroyed on the grounds they were "dangerous to public morality". Gaimster considers the Secretum's formation was possibly as a result of the new legislation.

The art historian Peter Webb considers that the Secretum was "one of the finest collections of erotica in the world". The Egyptologist Richard Parkinson writes that the Secretum was among the first steps in the scientific "study [of] human sexuality across cultures". It was this growing discipline of the late nineteenth century that provided the backdrop to the studies by the physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. The historian Victoria Donnellan considers the collection "represents an interesting case study for the shifting lines of acceptability versus perceived obscenity". Gaimster considers it useful as an example of Victorian collecting culture; in 2000 he wrote that the collection was "a product of its time, place and culture. It is a historical artefact in its own right, but also serves as a warning to future generations of historians against imposing their own contemporary prejudices on the material culture of the past." Johns says the individual items should be studied in the context of their own time: "When you take these objects out of time and lump them together you relate them not to the culture which produced them but to the culture of Victorian England".