A FORMER magistrate jailed for downloading child pornography from the Internet has been struck off the nursing register.

Frederick Keith Stott, aged 48, admitted making indecent pictures of children on a computer he kept locked away in his garden shed.

The married father-of-three had set himself up in business as a first aid trainer after quitting his job as a part-time lecturer at Bolton College in April 2000.

He later claimed he used the sordid images of naked young boys and girls for research and even set up a website promoting the business.

Stott, of Presto Gardens, Deane, was caught while working as a telephonist for a careline for people with disabilities.

Several staff members complained to police following a night shift.

When officers arrested Stott, they searched his shed and confiscated the computer hard drive and 13 disks holding up to 50 images.

When interviewed by police, Stott, who used to sit as a magistrate in Bolton, admitted downloading the images but said they were for research purposes.

In March last year at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, Stott pleaded guilty to eight charges of making indecent photographs of children between October 2000 and February 2001 and was jailed for six months.

He was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders' Register for seven years. Judge John Burke, QC, told him: "You and offenders like you constitute the customers and market place that encourages evil perverts to prey on young children."

Yesterday, at a disciplinary hearing in London, the Nursing and Midwifery Council's professional conduct committee found him guilty of one charge of misconduct and ordered his name to be erased from the national nursing register.

In a statement read at the hearing, Mr Stott said he had been using the images to undertake a biological study. Removal from the professional register means he is banned from practising nursing in the UK.

The council's director of professional conduct, Liz McAnulty, said: "This behaviour is appalling for a professional whose responsibility it is to justify public trust and confidence at all times.

"Mr Stott has failed to uphold and enhance the good standing of the profession and has been removed from the register to protect the public."

Stott had said he downloaded the images as part of research he was engaged with in connection with the physical development of females.

He told police: "They were images that I came across for general research. It's not quite the sort of thing I expected to find. I just stuck them on a disk, I really don't know why."

At his Crown Court hearing, his lawyer said he had worked in a number of capacities relating to health care. He had left his job as a lecturer at Bolton College to set up a business offering to teach first aid.

an Metcalfe, defending, said Stott had lost his position in society and faced great shame.

In the course of starting up that business, he set up his own website but it was claimed that his trawl through the Internet led him into the "dark and shadowy regions of Internet pornography".

Martin Callery, prosecuting, said Stott had a website offering training in connection with paediatric first aid. He claimed the pictures were for general research into the physical development of females.

A spokesman for the Greater Manchester Magistrates Court Committee said Stott had been appointed a magistrate in 1992, but resigned in 1996 due to ''work commitments".