Secretum (British Museum)

Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la
Housed at	British Museum
Size (no. of items)	c. 1,150 items
Funded by	British Museum Sir William Hamilton Richard Payne Knight Charles Townley George Witt

The Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la (Latin for "Secret") was a collection held by the British Museum to store artefacts that depicted sexually graphic acts or images. Many of the items were amulets, charms and votive offerings, often from pre-Christian traditions, including the worship of Priapus, the Greek god of fertility and male genitalia. The separation was likely on the moral grounds, with a paternalistic stance from the museum to keep what they considered morally dangerous material away from all except scholars.

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, and these were separated out by museum staff and not put on public display. 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 Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la to hold his collection and similar works.

The items then held in the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la were from cultures from around the world and covered a wide part of human history, including ancient Egypt, the classical era Greco-Roman world, the ancient Near East, medieval England, shungacode: jpn promoted to code: ja —Japanese erotic art—and India. During the nineteenth century, the museum actively and systematically sought out sexual antiquities to add to the Secretum.

The Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la collection began to be broken up in 1912, with the transfer of items into the departments where they sat with other pieces from their own timeframe and culture. The last entry into the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la was in 1953, when the British Library found 18th-century condoms being used as bookmarks in a 1783 publication they held. Items continued to be moved out of the collection until the last remaining items were redistributed in 2005.

Background

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 the Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. Collectors of classical artefacts donated or sold their acquisitions to the museum, including major works, such as the Rosetta Stone in 1802 and the Elgin Marbles in 1816.

The library holdings of the British Museum—later the British Library—separated any obscene or pornographic publications in the nineteenth century. Although there is no accurate date when this began, the informal practice of locking up 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 public collections had an antecedent in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples—the museum which contained Roman artefacts from the nearby Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum sites—whose Gabinetto Segreto, contained the erotic works found in those locations.

History

Pre-Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la , 1750s to 1865

Examples of items donated to the British Museum from Richard Payne Knight and Charles Townley

Ancient and modern amulets, from Knight's 1786 work A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus

A nymph and satyr statue donated by Townley

From its early days the British Museum's acquisitions included articles that displayed erotic or sexually graphic images; among Sloane's donations were three lamps: one depicting a dancer whose "large phallus swings behind him", according to the museum's catalogue; one described as being "decorated with a woman in intercourse with a monkey"; and one showing "an ass mounting a lion". Subsequently acquired collections with sexually graphic images included that of Sir William Hamilton, who sold his part of his collection to the museum in 1772 for £8,400, with later gifts of objects also being made. 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, the Greek 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, which comprised more than 1,140 drawing, 800 bronzes and in excess of 5,200 coins, were bequeathed to the British Museum; its 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 a tantracode: san promoted to code: sa temple.

Within the collections of Hamilton, Knight and Townley were erotically charged or sexually graphic images from ancient Egypt, the classical era 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. Such a classification was not on an academic basis, but a moral one, according to the archaeologist and museum executive David Gaimster. Further material with sexual imagery was deposited with in the collection in the 1840s and 1850s.

Official formation, 1865 onwards

Donations to the British Museum from George Witt

Interior of a Greek cup. The cup is black, with a white image of a woman on her knees and a man kneeing behind her; she is reaching behind her, grasping his penis.

Attic cup, with an erotic scene showing in the interior

Terracotta lamp from central Italy, decorated with a winged phallus

Although from its inception the British Museum had separated out the profane material it possessed, the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la (Latin for "Secret") was only formally founded in 1865. The Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la 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 the collector of antiquities George Witt 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, a physician who became mayor of Bedford and then a banker, became a collector late in life. His interest lay in phallicism and fertility in pre-Christian societies, particularly on the worship of Priapus. Witt's belief was that all pre-Christian cultures "shared a common religious heritage in their worship of fertility gods and goddesses", according to Gaimster, and Witt included with his donation a self-published pamphlet Catalogue of a Collection Illustrative of Phallic Worship. Included in Witt's acquisitions were artefacts from Greek, Egyptian and Roman antiquity, reliefs from Indian temples, profane 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 shungacode: jpn promoted to code: ja —Japanese erotic art—which was the first of its type held by the museum and what he thought was a medieval chastity belt, although this was a fake manufactured in Victorian times. The journalist Laura Thomas observes that Witt "did not care to place them in any cultural or chronological milieu. Regardless of provenance ... [he] selected the pieces for their obscenity value alone". According to Gaimster, the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la "took on its official status" with Witt's donation.

A figure of a woman holding two phalluses, depicted on the interior of a kylix made by Pamphaios (Ancient Greek: Πάνφαιος). The item was purchased by the British Museum from Pierre Louis Jean Casimir de Blacas in 1867.

The British Museum did not advertise or promote their ownership of the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la 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 an outside 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 Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la or into their main holdings. This acquisition continued from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, including the period when the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la 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 Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la , many did not, but instead went into the relevant museum department.

Break-up, 1912 to 2000s

Objects began to be released from the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la 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 Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la was in 1953, when the British Library passed some 18th-century condoms being 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 or displayed with the relevant department.

During the 1960s the curatorship of the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la was moved to the newly formed Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities, where they were housed in cupboards 55 and 54 of the museum; "Cupboard 55" became one of the nicknames by which the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la was known. The collection was gradually reduced over time by transferring items to the relevant branch 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 Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la 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 prints and cartoons locked in cupboard 205 of the Department of Prints and Drawings in 2009.

Unlike the Gabinetto Segreto, whose exhibits are displayed in a separate room, with warning signs on entry, the former exhibits of the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la were integrated into the main displays from the 1970s onwards, when Roman vases depicting ithyphallicscode: lat promoted to code: la (Latin for "erect penises") were placed in the main displays.

Rationale and academic discipline

A Roman wind chime (Latin: tintinabulum), bequeathed to the British Museum by Sir William Temple in 1856

Rationale

Classicists and curators—including Gaimster and Johns—consider that what Johns calls "Victorian prudery" was behind the decision to segregate the sexually graphic items out of the main collection. The art curator Marina Wallace also consider the paternalistic approach was behind the decision, and considers that the censorship of items was made by educated men, who thought themselves able to study artefacts with sexual graphics without 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 Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la was formally started soon after the introduction of the Obscene Publications Act 1857 and considers its formation was possibly as a result of the new legislation.

Academic discipline

The art historian Peter Webb considers that the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la was "one of the finest collections of erotica in the world". The Egyptologist Richard Parkinson writes that the contents of the Secretumcode: lat promoted to code: la were 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; he sees the collection as "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." The archaeologist and museum curator Catherine Johns holds a contrary opinion and says the 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". She considers that classifying artefacts on grounds of obscenity is "academically indefensible" because "'obscenity' is not an scholarly classification".

Notes and references

Sources

Books

• Burnett, Andrew; Reeve, John (2001). Behind the Scenes at the British Museum. London: British Museum Press. ISBN 978-0-7141-2196-3.
• Caygill, Marjorie (1997). "Franks and the British Museum—the Cuckoo in the Nest". A. W. Franks: Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum. London: British Museum Press. pp. 51–114. ISBN 978-0-7141-1763-8.
• Cross, Paul (1991). "The Private Case: A History". In Harris, P. R. (ed.). The Library of the British Museum: Retrospective Essays on the Department of Printed Books. London: The British Library. pp. 201–240. ISBN 978-0-7123-0242-5.
• Donnellan, Victoria (2019). "Ethics and Erotics: Receptions of an Ancient Statue of a Nymph and Satyr". In Funke, Jana; Grove, Jen (eds.). Sculpture, Sexuality and History: Encounters in Literature, Culture and the Arts from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 145–170. ISBN 978-3-3199-5839-2.
• Frost, Stuart (2010). "The Warren Cup: Secret Museums, Sexuality and Society". In Levin, Amy K. (ed.). Gender, Sexuality and Museums: A Routledge Reader. London: Routledge. pp. 138–150. ISBN 978-0-415-55491-6.
• Fryer, Peter (1966). Private Case—Public Scandal: Secrets of the British Museum Revealed. London: Secker and Warburg. OCLC 314927730.
• Gaimster, David (2001). "Under Lock and Key". In Bayley, Stephen (ed.). Sex. London: Cassell. pp. 127–139. ISBN 978-0-304-35946-2.
• Johns, Catherine (1982). Sex or Symbol: Erotic Images of Greece and Rome. London: British Museum. ISBN 978-0-7141-8042-7.
• Legman, Gershon (1981). Introduction. The Private Case: An Annotated Bibliography of the Private Case Erotica Collection in the British (Museum) Library. By Kearney, Patrick. London: Jay Landesman. pp. 11–59. ISBN 978-0-9051-5024-6.
• Olson, Kelly (2014). "Roman Sexuality and Gender". In Gibbs, Matt; Nikolic, Milorad; Ripat, Pauline (eds.). Themes in Roman Society and Culture: An Introduction to Ancient Rome. Ontario: Oxford University Press. pp. 164–188. ISBN 978-0-1954-4519-0.
• Parkinson, R. B. (2013). A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-2311-6663-8.
• Perrottet, Tony (2011). The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historic Underbelly of Europe. New York: Broadway Books. ISBN 978-0-307-59218-7.
• Smith, Rupert (2007). The Museum: Behind the Scenes at the British Museum. London: BBC Books. ISBN 978-0-563-53913-1.
• Wallace, Marina (2007). Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now. London: Barbican. ISBN 978-1-8589-4416-6.
• Webb, Peter (1998). "Erotic Art". In Turner, Jane (ed.). The Dictionary of Art. New York: Grove. pp. 472–487. ISBN 978-1-884446-00-9.
• Wright, Thomas (1865). Preface. A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients. By Knight, Richard Payne; Wright, Thomas. London: Privately printed. OCLC 1404206315.

Journals and magazines

• Frost, Stuart (April 2008). "Secret Museums: Hidden Histories of Sex and Sexuality". Museums & Social Issues. 3 (1): 29–40. doi:10.1179/msi.2008.3.1.29.
• Gaimster, David (September 2000). "Sex and Sensibility at the British Museum". History Today. Vol. 50, no. 9. pp. 10–15.
• Thomas, Laura (May 2000). "Eye of the Beholder". Index on Censorship. 29 (3): 161–165. doi:10.1080/03064220008536740.
• Wickstead, Helen (2 September 2018). "Sex in the Secret Museum: Photographs from the British Museum's Witt Scrapbooks". Photography and Culture. 11 (3): 351–366. doi:10.1080/17514517.2018.1545887. ISSN 1751-4517.

Websites

• "Charles Townley". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 10 October 2022. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
• Clark, Gregory (2023). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Archived from the original on 1 April 2023. Retrieved 22 February 2023.
• "Collecting Histories". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 15 March 2023. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
• "Cup (object 1867,0508.1064)". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 3 April 2023. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
• Gaimster, David (2022). "Witt, George (1804–1869)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/74100. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• "History of the British Museum". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 15 March 2023. Retrieved 18 March 2023.
• "Lamp (object 1756,0101.270)". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 27 May 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
• "Lamp (object 1756,0101.648)". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
• "Lamp (object 1756,0101.1088)". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 26 February 2024. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
• "Richard Payne Knight". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 19 January 2024. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
• "Sir William Hamilton". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 9 November 2023. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
• Stumpf-Condry, C.; Skedd, S. J. (2015). "Knight, Richard Payne (1751–1824)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15733. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• "Tantra at the British Museum". British Museum. Archived from the original on 21 December 2020. Retrieved 15 February 2024.

Newspapers

• Barrell, Tony (30 August 2009). "Rude Britannia: Erotic Secrets of the British Museum". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 15 June 2011.
• Morrison, Richard (30 August 2002). "A Rude Awakening". The Times. pp. 16–17.
• Rogers, Byron (19 June 1999). "The Secrets of Cupboard 55". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015.

Thesis and papers

• Frost, Stuart (2017). Lehnes, Patrick; Frost, Stuart (eds.). Secret Museums and Shunga: Sex and Sensitivities. Proceedings of the Interpret Europe Conferences in Primošten and Kraków (2014 and 2015).
• Grove, Jennifer (May 2013). The Collection and Reception of Sexual Antiquities in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century (PDF) (PhD thesis). Exeter University. OCLC 890158966. Retrieved 15 February 2024.