Sabrina Hirst: Shocking case of Sheffield mum who cared more about her dogs and starved her daughter to death

Sabrina Hirst was sentenced to 12 years behind bars in 2008 after she admitted the manslaughter of her three-year-old daughter Tiffany Wright, who was so badly neglected that she had been dead for at least two days before her mum and stepdad raised the alarm.

Tragic Tiffany starved to death in the flat above the pub her mum and stepdad, Robert Hirst, ran – the Scarborough Arms in Upperthorpe – in 2007.

The toddler’s body was covered in insect bites after suffering a 'prolonged period of malnutrition' and 'utter neglect,' a report into her death revealed. The flat was found covered in dog faeces when it was examined after Tiffany’s death.

Tiffany’s mum, who was 22 at the time of the court case into the death, was sentenced to 12 years after admitting manslaughter and child cruelty. Her then 44-year-old husband admitted two counts of child cruelty and was jailed for five years.

Sheffield Crown Court heard the couple they had kept Tiffany in “squalor, filth and degradation” and “entirely neglected” her. Tests revealed Tiffany had not eaten or drunk anything for at least 20 hours before her body was found.

The sentencing judge, The Recorder of Sheffield, Alan Goldsack, expressed his surprise at the time that the Crown Prosecution Service had accepted Tiffany’s mum’s guilty plea to manslaughter when she was initially charged with murder.

He described the case as “about as bad a case of child manslaughter as there can be” and said had the mum been convicted of murder, he could have sentenced her to to 22 years behind bars.

CCTV footage found in the pub showed Sabrina Hirst working in the bar in the days before her daughter's death and at one point she was captured talking about whether her dogs had been fed – while her daughter starved upstairs.

Opening the case, Jeremy Richardson explained how Tiffany was brought up in “circumstances of abject squalor and degradation”. She was often “never fed properly, if at all,” he added.

Jailing them, Judge Goldsack told the pair: “Most members of the public, particularly parents, will find it impossible to understand how you could treat your children in this way.”