LEGENDARY escape artist Harry Houdini hated Blackburn and called it a “wretched town”, a new book has revealed.

Previously unseen extracts from his diary in the new book The Secret Life of Houdini recount a performance that he gave at the Palace Theatre in Blackburn Boulevard in October 1902.

Houdini was on a world tour in which he called himself the “Handcuff King” and was challenging any audience member to bring their own shackles for him to attempt to escape from.

A £25 prize was put up by Houdini for any succesful challenge, which was held by officials at the Northern Daily Telegraph, a predecessor to this newspaper.

But in his diary he wrote that one man, William Hope Hodgson, had produced “non regulation” restraints.

When he eventually escaped the crooked locks he was battered and bruised, the reports state.

The diary continues: “I have been in the handcuff business for 14 years but never have I been so brutally and cruelly ill treated. Those locks were plugged.”

Authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman write that the day after the incident Houdini met with a reporter from the Blackburn Daily Star.

They write: “He (Houdini) pulled up his sleeves and showed the newspaperman his arms.

"They were both hideously blue and swollen with large chunks of flesh torn out.”

In a letter to the Northen Daily Telegraph two days after the show, Mr Hodgson wrote: “It was only his own struggles which caused him any degree of inconvenience.”

Later that year Houdini returned to Blackburn on another tour.

He wrote: “Back to this wretched town. Of all the hoodlum towns I ever worked, the gallery is certainly the worst.”

l The Secret Life of Houdini — The Making of the World’s Greatest Mystifier by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, published by Pocket Books, is available for £8.99.