The secret museum: masculinities, magic, and the British Museum‘s Secretum, 1866-1896

In 1866 curators fitted out a room in the British Museum‘s north basement for collections ‟Illustrative of Phallic Worship”. Equipped with its own catalogue and library, the Secretum contained 982 items, organised into different regions, providing one of the world‘s first facilities for researching religion and sexuality around the world. This paper presents the interlinked microhistories of three men connected to the Secretum. A microhistorical approach allows me to investigate the politics of secrecy generated by the Secretum. Men who entered the Secretum commodified access to its artefacts, creating esoteric mysteries marketed towards ideologically masculine elites and magical, hermetic brotherhoods.