Once a wealthy and respected farmer, Nigel Spilman Hawkins stripped his grandmother of all her money and cheated his sister out of her inheritance, a court heard.

Hawking's fraud enabled him to go skiing in America with his wife and children, and travel to Florida as the family farming business crashed into ruin.

Frail Lena Hawking had given him between £50,000 to £60,000 from the sale of her house in the early 1990s and trusted him to run her affairs after she went into a nursing home. He responded by stealing the rest of her money and reduced her to a penniless state, dependent on benefits to pay her nursing home fees.

Mrs Hawking is gravely ill in hospital and her grandson, who for years was chief pig steward at the Great Yorkshire Show, is now a jailbird and a bankrupt.

"You are a ruined man and your reputation has gone," the Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, told Nigel Hawking.

Pig farmer Hawking, 45, of Huddlestone Grange, South Milford, pleaded guilty to four charges of theft and was jailed for nine months.

David Brooke, prosecuting, said that Mrs Hawking suffered from Alzheimer's Disease and her mental health deteriorated from 1991 onwards.

In 1994, she gave Nigel Hawking power of attorney. His main duty was to pay her care home fees.

But he misused his power on at least four occasions to move her money without her consent into the family business and eventually the state had to take over when he failed to pay the fees. His sister and he were joint heirs to Mrs Hawking's money.

In 2001, he used the firm's money for a family skiing holiday and spent Christmas 2001 in America, although the business's finances were becoming a "black hole".

"The background to this was a lifestyle he wished to maintain. He didn't appear to sacrifice himself," said Mr Brooke. The grandson lived in a "particularly impressive property" which is now in the name of his wife, Julia.

For Hawking, Tony Kelbrick said he had been trying to prop up the ailing family business.

The fraud had split the family, prompted civil cases and may have led to "summary justice" upon Nigel Hawking.

The farmer had hoped to pass on the generations-old family business to his son but a £1.5 million bank loan to buy land had proved a disaster as crops failed and the pig market declined.

Updated: 08:53 Saturday, January 07, 2006