A NURSING services manager from Rishton has been jailed for two and a half years for the manslaughter of an elderly woman in the Isle of Man.

Marion Ethel Dennis, 77, died seven days after being admitted to Noble's Hospital in July 1999.

The pensioner, a retired shopkeeper, died from septicaemia resulting from pressure sores "the size of a fist" which developed while she was a resident at Ballastowell Gardens nursing home in Ramsey. In October, a jury convicted the home's nursing services manager, 34 year-old Dennis Latham of Brook Street, Rishton, and his deputy Barbara Campbell, of Glasgow, of Mrs Dennis's manslaughter.

During the five-week trial, the jury was told that Latham and Campbell were guilty of gross negligence in their care of Mrs Dennis.

Police were praised by Acting Deemster Rowe for their diligence in investigating the care of Mrs Dennis.

She had been a a resident at Ballastowell Gardens from March 1999 to her death in hospital in July 1999.

The island's director of social services, David Cooke, said the home had been inspected in May 1999 and nothing was found amiss.

However, he said that inspection procedures at nursing homes were being reviewed by the Department of Health and Social Security.

Yesterday, acting deemster John Rowe sentenced Latham to two and a half years' imprisonment and jailed 62-year-old Campbell for one year.

The deemster said Mrs Dennis had suffered pain and indignity before she died. One of the sores on her body had penetrated to the bone.

He also said both Latham and Campbell had allowed her suffering to continue.

Latham and Campbell were charged in 2001 after the Isle of Man coroner called for a police investigation following Mrs Dennis' death on July 20, 1999.

The deemster said he accepted there had been a delay in bringing the case to trial and had reduced the jail terms substantially as a result.

But he rejected submissions from the defence to suspend the sentences.