Tiffany Hirst: the toddler left to die alone and unloved

In a case of neglect that resulted in the death of Tiffany Hirst, 3, a court was told yesterday how passers-by used to see the gaunt face of the toddler staring through the window of her mother’s squalid flat.

Despite the flow of customers to and from the Sheffield pub below, senior detectives said that the neglect continued to go unnoticed, leaving the toddler to die, unloved and alone.

Tiffany was found by paramedics in a filthy bed in a beetle-infested room at the Scarbrough Arms in Addy Street, Upperthorpe. The pub was run by her mother, Sabrina Hirst, 22, and stepfather, Robert Hirst, 54.

“It is heartbreaking. We think this neglect had been going on for months and that those last few months, weeks and days of her life, she was unloved, unwanted, starved of attention and left alone to die and she would have known that.”