A former regional press journalist who became the first woman reporter in the parliamentary press gallery has died aged 84.

Pat Newton, originally from Weymouth, began her career on the Southern Times – now the Dorset Echo – in 1939.

Two years later she moved to London and worked on local papers in South London before landing a job at the Press Association.

She became the first woman reporter in the parliamentary press gallery in 1946, working as part of PA’s gallery team.

She was subsequently fired on two occasions, in 1956 and 1961, after becoming pregnant with her first and second children.

But on both occasions she was reinstated, after female MPs Dame Irene Ward and Barbara Castle brought up her plight in the Commons Chamber.

She finally left the press gallery in 1964 to become a civil service press officer, continuing in that role until her retirement in 1984.

She married policeman Joe O’Brien in 1950 and the couple had two children, Francesca and Tom.

“The PA job was one of the two great breaks in her life. The other, three years earlier, was meeting our father at a police ball,” her children wrote in a national newspaper tribute.

“Our parents were trailblazers, and as we grew older our mother’s quiet determination was a source of inspiration and great pride.”