A conman who cheated pensioners out of their Christmas turkeys has been jailed for two months just after his partner and partner-in-crime was released.

Ian Lockyer, 42, and Helen Pitson, 41, went door to door around Oxford taking orders for Christmas hampers from the elderly and poor.

They were promised bumper hampers for instalments of £10 and £5 but, come Christmas, the goods never arrived. The pair who have also recently been before the courts for cruelty to their dog were convicted of four offences of theft and Pitson has already served a jail sentence for her part in the scam.

Lockyer, of Strawberry Path in Blackbird Leys, Oxford, had been spared an immediate jail sentence at the same time because it would have meant there was no-one who could look after the couple's two children.

But on Friday at the Old Bailey in London, Mr Justice Gross sentenced him to 60 days in prison for theft.

The judge told Lockyer: 'At the last hearing I delayed your sentence as an act of mercy so that your children would not have both parents in custody at the same time.

"I now pass the 60-day sentence I indicated on the last occasion."

The pair denied charges of animal cruelty, but were convicted in their absence at a trial at Didcot Magistrates' Court in March this year.

An RSPCA inspector found the couple's 12-year-old greyhound Pappy was underfed and dehydrated with oozing sores.

It was discovered in a heap of urine soaked newspaper barely able to stand and had to be put down.

A fish tank was so dirty the water looked like "pea soup" and the couple kept a rabbit in a cardboard box.

Oxford magistrates sentenced Lockyer to 200 hours community service and gave Pitson a three-year conditional discharge.

They also banned the couple from owning pets for life.

Sentencing them, magistrate Michael Wright said: "This was a horrific case.

"The photographs tell the story only too dramatically."

He said Ms Pitson, who arrived at court on crutches, only escaped a community punishment order because she was in ill health. He also ordered them to pay £1,000 costs.