Thieves have piled anguish on top of grief for a recently-widowed North Yorkshire woman.

Margaret Brookes is comforted by her son Richard after the raid in which her late husband's watch was taken

Only days after Margaret Brookes had attended her husband Peter's funeral, burglars smashed through the back door of their York home and rifled through its contents.

While Mrs Brookes, 72, spent a miserable New Year's Eve at her son's house, mourning her husband's unexpected death, the raiders stole two TVs, a video - and Peter's treasured gold watch.

The leather-strapped timepiece, engraved with his full name, Peter Allen Brookes, on the back, was the single most important item she had to remember him by.

Today, a distraught Mrs Brookes was coming to terms with her losses. One of her two sons, Richard, of Little Fenton, near Selby said: "It is just terrible that this has happened. As soon as the police called to say she had been burgled we went round, and the gold watch was the first thing she looked for. There are photographs of my father but his watch was the thing she wanted."

Mrs Brookes was staying at her son's house after Peter, a former engineer, died, aged 73,on December 16. He had had an illness but his family expected him to live for some time. The couple had recently moved into a new house in Woodthorpe, and the family were helping them to decorate.

Richard added: "Everything has happened at once. The burglary could not have come at a worse time. There is a very long queue of people wanting to get their hands on whoever did this, and I'm near the front of it. They must be a particularly low form of underclass. The value of the goods they stole must be negligible. They could have earned more money with less effort doing an honest job.

"We have no idea how much my father's watch was worth, and we don't care - it was the best thing we had to remember him by."

He said his mother would not remain in her Woodthorpe home for much longer. "There are nothing but bad memories there for her. She will sell up and move on as soon as possible."

PC Alan Murray, of York police, said: "Burglaries are distressing at the best of times but this one was on New Year's Eve and came just after the death of this lady's husband, putting further heartache on her. It is a terrible thing to have happened to her and we would urge anybody who knows anything or who sees the watch to get in touch with us."

York police can be contacted on York 631321.

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