A father who made his two daughters pregnant 19 times during almost 30 years of repeated rape and physical abuse was given 25 life sentences last night, and will serve a minimum of 19-and-a-half-years in prison. The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his daughters, fathered nine children with them, two of whom died at birth. The other 10 pregnancies were miscarried or terminated.

He pleaded guilty last month to 25 counts of rape, dating from the early 1980s and continuing until this year, when the terrified women finally mustered the courage to seek help.

Jayne Ludlam, director of children's and young people's services at Sheffield city council, said social workers had become aware of the "harrowing" abuse in June, and that an independent review into the case had already been launched.

In a case with echoes of the Austrian man Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in an underground dungeon for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, Sheffield crown court heard how the man, who is 56 and divorced, began abusing the sisters when they were between eight and 10, and that they were badly beaten to make them comply.

He "took pleasure" in assaulting the girls, the court had heard, and the violent attacks would stop only while the children were pregnant. "His younger daughter told of the frightening habit her father had of putting her head next to the flames of their gas fire and that when she struggled to get away on certain occasions she burnt her eyes," Nicholas Campbell QC, prosecuting, told the court. They were kept out of school when their injuries were visible, and the family moved repeatedly to avoid suspicion. The girls' mother left home in the early 1990s; a brother also lived with them until his teens.

The court heard that in 1988 suspicions were raised at the victims' school due to their injuries but these were blamed on bullying. On one occasion one of the women was asked by a doctor if her father was the father of her own children, which she flatly denied. They also called Childline, the court was told, and asked for a guarantee that their children would not be taken away, but hung up when this assurance could not be given.

Sentencing, Judge Alan Goldsack QC said: "The phrase 'it is difficult to imagine a worse case' is much overused and rarely, if ever, true. But I can say that in nearly 40 years of dealing with criminal cases and 14 as a family judge the combination of aggravating circumstances here is the worst I have come across."

Ludlam said: "Due to the seriousness of this case an independent review has already been launched which will look into the circumstances surrounding the case and the contact the agencies had with the victims."