A court today jailed for 14 months a pharmacist who attacked a prosecutor with an iron bar at the disciplinary hearing at which he was struck off.

Samuel Ashby, 61, attacked Desmond Fitzpatrick, 47, with the 30cm [12in] bar at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society hearing on October 25 last year.

Ashby had just heard that he would lose his right to practise after behaving aggressively towards staff, insulting customers and making dispensing errors.

Mr Fitzpatrick had stepped in front of Ashby after the defendant vaulted the table in front of him, brandishing the metal bar and attempting to get near the president of the hearing.

Australian-born Ashby, from Inglesby, near Grantham, Lincolnshire, told the barrister: "You can have it, then," Inner London crown court heard today.

Ashby had reacted furiously when the president of the hearing refused to read aloud documents in which the defendant aired his grievances about how, he claimed, the society had treated him, Noel Shaw, prosecuting, told the court today.

Mr Shaw said Ashby had hit Mr Fitzpatrick several times on the head with the bar, which had a bolt attached to it.

Other people in court then managed to restrain Ashby. Mr Fitzpatrick, who was left bloodied by the attack, was treated in hospital for a 12cm-long scalp wound requiring seven stitches. Ashby pleaded guilty to causing actual bodily harm.

Sentencing him today, Judge Quentin Campbell said that after seeing a psychiatric report on Ashby's mental state, he had considered using new laws to send the pharmacist to prison for an indeterminate period in order to protect the public.

However, the judge told Ashby he was satisfied the attack was a "one-off".

In the report, a psychiatrist said Ashby remained "very angry with the Pharmaceutical Society, doesn't regret his actions and feels they were justifiable", the court heard.

The psychiatrist said she believed the defendant had a "substantial" narcissistic personality disorder that made him lacking in empathy, arrogant and haughty, and which gave him "a tendency to bear grudges".

Julia Faure Walker, defending, said Ashby now regretted his actions and saw that the prosecutor had only been doing his job.

She said Ashby's life had been "collapsing around him" at the time of the attack, and that he had been banished from the profession in which he had worked since his early 20s.

The judge said: "Whatever you did ... this matter is a tragedy for you. Here you are, a man of 61, who has led a hardworking life, and whatever the ups and downs of your professional life, people speak highly of you.

"You have never been in any trouble before with the law. You are an intelligent man, and it is a tragedy that you now find yourself in the situation that you do."

The judge sentenced Ashby to 14 months' imprisonment. He will serve half of this sentence before being released on licence, minus the 21 days he has already spent on remand.

Ashby remained quiet throughout today's hearing, apart from when the judge suggested he had taken the bar to the hearing with the intention of causing harm. After being sentenced, he was led quietly away from the dock.