Is justice blind to the charms of Oxbridge-educated young women?

Last December, Lavinia Woodward threw a laptop at her boyfriend and stabbed him in the lower leg with a breadknife, and injured two of his fingers. She then tried to stab herself with the knife before he disarmed her.

For unlawful wounding, this medical student at Christchurch Oxford, could have got a three-year prison sentence; instead she got a 10-month sentence suspended for 18 months on Monday. The judge, Ian Pringle, when he first heard the case, observed that a custodial sentence would harm her career. Quite. And he declared, as he handed down the suspended sentence, that there were ‘many, many mitigating factors’ in the case, and the injuries inflicted were ‘relatively minor’. Indeed so, though I’m not sure that I’d want a heart surgeon – Miss Woodward’s intended career – to have quite her impulsive temperament.