A British nurse found guilty of the “sadistic” murders of seven babies and the attempted murder of another six has been given a whole-life sentence, the single most severe punishment in English criminal law, following the end of a ten-month trial last week.

Sentencing 33-year-old Lucy Letby at Manchester Crown Court on Monday, Justice James Goss KC described the nurse’s crimes as a “cruel, calculated, and cynical campaign of child murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children”.