A Yorkshire woman who “blighted” the lives of her “measured, sensible and pleasant” children by subjecting them to a six-year campaign of cruelty has been jailed for 18 months.

Linda Clappison, 46, of Keyingham Grange Cottages, Keyingham Marsh, East Yorkshire, was found guilty of two counts of child cruelty at a trial at Hull Crown Court last month.

Sentencing Clappison, Judge Michael Mettyear, the Recorder of Hull, described the case as “tragic” and praised the “super” children, who gave evidence against their mother at the trial.

The trial heard that the mother-of-four forced her two youngest children to work for gypsies as slaves after falling under the spell of a fortune teller.

Within weeks of the meeting, Clappison started locking her son and daughter, then aged ten and six, in their rooms and assaulting them.

She fed them only sandwiches and took the lightbulbs, toys and all mattresses and bedding from their rooms, leaving them needing hospital treatment for frostbite.

Her son, Andrew Clappison, now 18, told the trial: “We were treated like dogs.”