A sex worker allowed clients to rape and indecently assault her three young daughters and kept the children in a manner described as “almost Victorian in its bleakness”, a jury has heard.

The woman would allegedly beat her children with bamboo sticks and belts and keep them locked in a bedroom for days at a time. They were sometimes so hungry and thirsty that they ate cat food and drank their own urine, the court was told.

One of the victims, now an adult, said she once tried to hang herself when she was just seven and only failed because she could not tie the knot tightly enough.

The mother – who cannot be named for legal reasons – denies 10 charges of child cruelty between 1976 and 1988, along with one of the men who allegedly abused the girls. Another man who was due to face charges died shortly before the trial began.

The woman allegedly worked from the family home in Plymouth, Devon, and allowed a string of clients and boyfriends access to her three daughters when they were of primary school age.

Details of the alleged crimes came to light last year when one of the daughters walked into a police station and began to tell her story.

The middle daughter told Plymouth crown court she was locked in a bedroom in the house on an estate for lengthy periods and would not know what day it was. She said she and her sisters were given a bucket to use as a toilet but had no water to drink and would sometimes drink their own urine.

“She [her mother] would disappear for three to four days at a time and we did not know where she was,” the daughter said. “She would use bamboo, belts and brushes – whatever she could lay her hands on.”

On one occasion the girls were found eating cat food because there was no food in the house.

Jurors heard that the woman’s clients and boyfriends touched the girls indecently and once a man raped one of the sisters on the bathroom floor.

The mother, now in her 70s, is in the dock alongside a 60-year-old man, Raymond Williams, who denies two indecent assaults on one of the sisters in 1981 and 1982.

A second man, aged 57, had been due to stand trial for the bathroom rape but died two weeks before the case started.

Sean Brunton, prosecuting, said: “This is a very sorry tale of child cruelty and sexual abuse which in some ways is almost Victorian in its bleakness. We say she [the mother] was working as a prostitute, from time to time at any rate. She was an inadequate woman who was either unwilling or incapable of looking after them properly. She exposed them to dangerous men. They had complete and unfettered access.”

Brunton said that as well as the 57-year-old, three other men identified by police after interviewing the complainants had also died.

The oldest daughter told the court: “Quite a few times when punters were in the house we were locked in the bedroom. We had to pee in a bucket. We were in there so long that sometimes we had to drink our own pee.”

The trial continues.