A FORMER headteacher and Ofsted inspector who drew her dead mother's pension for 11 months among thefts totalling nearly £12,000 has been given a suspended jail sentence.

Margaret Findley, 57, also took cash 59 times using her mother's cash point card after her death, and took money from the bank account of an 84-year-old hospital patient.

A psychiatric report revealed she had a nervous breakdown in1996 after a parent at her school, in Sunderland, threatened her with a shotgun, Teesside Crown Court was told.

The same year she was convicted of stealing £1,000 from the Women's Institute in Saltburn, east Cleveland, of which she was the treasurer, and given a conditional discharge.

She drew £5,258 of her mother's pension from steel company Corus after failing to notify the firm she had died, spending it on clothing, ornaments, handbags and curtains and employing a decorator, said John Gillette, prosecuting.

She also stole cheques from Muriel Oliver, 84, and obtained her pin number when she was her voluntary carer, withdrawing £2,387 while she was seriously ill in hospital.

Michael Bosomworth, mitigating, said that the thefts stemmed from the shock of the shotgun incident which led to her retirement.

He said: "She is a lady who needs help, she has put a great deal into society as a teacher and she deserves to draw on the credit now."

Findley, of The High Street, Great Ayton, North Yorkshire, was given a seven months jail sentence suspended for two years with a supervision order after she admitted four offences of theft, three of obtaining property by deception, two of handling a false instrument with intent, and two of producing a false instrument.

Fifty-four other offences were taken into consideration.

She was also ordered to pay compensation of £11,905, and to co-operate with any psychiatric treatment.