Mother jailed over girl's death

Tiffany Wright died in "squalor, filth and degradation" when she was "entirely neglected" by her parents at the pub they ran in Sheffield last year.

At Sheffield Crown Court, Sabrina Hirst, 22, was jailed for 12 years after previously admitting manslaughter. Her husband, Robert Hirst, 44, was jailed for five years after admitting child cruelty.

The Recorder of Sheffield, Judge Alan Goldsack QC, described the case as "about as bad a case of child manslaughter as there can be". The judge heard the circumstances of Tiffany's death were "truly appalling".

He was told how the little girl's body was found decomposing by police in a beetle-infested room at the Scarbrough Arms, in Upperthorpe, Sheffield in September last year.

A pathologist said she had been dead for between two and three days and tests showed she had not eaten or drunk anything for at least 20 hours, probably more. The court heard Tiffany died from bronchial pneumonia which was a direct result of malnutrition.

Opening the case, Jeremy Richardson QC told the judge Tiffany died because she "simply had not been fed or given fluids".

Mr Richardson explained how the family lived above the pub where Tiffany was brought up in "circumstances of abject squalor and degradation". He said the couple would regularly go out leaving the little girl with no supervision in a flat which was covered in dog faeces and had bare electrical cables exposed from wall sockets. He said the couple "entirely neglected" their daughter.

The prosecutor added that the squalor "almost defies description for any human being to live in" and that: "In the last week of her life she was never nourished or cared for at all."

The court heard how Tiffany was about one and half stone (9kg) at the time of her death and was 3ft 4ins tall. She had put on less than a kilo in weight in the last two years of her life.