London, Jul 25 (IANS): A 44-year-old Briton has been sentenced to five years in jail for handing out bizarre and cruel punishments to his three children, including once when he hung his daughter upside down from a chandelier.

The unnamed man from Bolton near Manchester also dislocated the shoulder of a toddler when he dumped her in a cot, hit his children with a plastic film roll and even bit one's arm, The Sun reported.

He admitted charges of cruelty against his three children, plus an assault on a woman, an assault on a 16-year-old girl, and causing bodily harm to a woman during 1999-2010.

The man once tied up his two daughters and covered their heads in a sheet after neither owned up to spilling salt.

When their mother tried to intervene, her hair was pulled and her nightdress ripped off.

On another occasion, one girl was hung from the chandelier by her feet and her bare backside was hit with the plastic film roll.

The man once attacked his wife with a rolling pin when she was pregnant.