A cab driver was recognised for his quick thinking after rushing a woman with life-threatening stab wounds to the Royal Free Hospital.

John White was driving down Finchley Road in West Hampstead at 11am on January 5 this year when he saw a man approach a pedestrian in her early 20s and hold up his hand as if to hail a black cab.

But to his horror the 52-year-old cab driver then watched the man raise an 8-inch kitchen knife above his head and plunge it into the woman’s back before vanishing from sight.

With the help of passerby Jacqueline Barnett he then took the woman, called Mary, into his cab and took her to the Royal Free Hospital in Pond Street, Hampstead.

Mr White, who has worked as a taxi driver in London for 20 years, said: “My daughter is of a similar age and when I spoke to Mary afterwards you got that feeling that she has survived something and still has her whole life ahead of her.

“If it was my daughter I would have done exactly the same thing and I didn’t want to see her die on the street.

“I just put her in the back of the cab and hoped she would survive.”

The knife pierced Mary’s lung, but she recovered and called Mr White to thank him for his life-saving actions.

At Camden Police’s commendation ceremony in Camden Town Hall on Friday, September 16, Mr White was recognised for his “prompt and effective action” in taking the woman to hospital to receive medical help that “potentially saved her life”.