diff --git a/spacy/tests/tokenizer/test_whitespace.py b/spacy/tests/tokenizer/test_whitespace.py
index 9d3fb7f5d..ad34c8791 100644
--- a/spacy/tests/tokenizer/test_whitespace.py
+++ b/spacy/tests/tokenizer/test_whitespace.py
@@ -33,3 +33,35 @@ def test_newline_double_space(en_tokenizer):
 def test_newline_space_wrap(en_tokenizer):
     tokens = en_tokenizer('hello \n possums')
     assert len(tokens) == 3
+
+
+def test_leading_space_offsets(en_tokenizer):
+    '''Issue #351
+    # this works
+
+    text1 = u"This is a cat."
+    a = english_spacy(text1)
+
+    tok0 = list(a.sents)[0][0]
+    print tok0, tok0.idx, text1[tok0.idx]
+
+    tok1 = list(a.sents)[0][1]
+    print tok1, tok1.idx, text1[tok1.idx]
+
+    print "=="
+
+    # this does not work
+
+    text2 = u"   This is a cat."
+    b = english_spacy(text2)
+
+    tok0 = list(b.sents)[0][0]
+print tok0, tok0.idx, text2[tok0.idx]
+
+    tok1 = list(b.sents)[0][1]
+    print tok1, tok1.idx, text2[tok1.idx]
+    '''
+    doc = en_tokenizer(u"   This is a cat.")
+    assert doc[0].idx == 0
+    assert len(doc[0]) == 3
+    assert doc[1].idx == 3