Mary was born in 1911, the elder daughter of Howard and Mary Bodley Savory. Her medical education was at Cambridge and University College Hospital, and her ophthalmic training as SHO and registrar at Royal Eye and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospitals. She held a BMA research scholarship in 1946 and was consultant ophthalmic surgeon at the Royal Eye Hosptial, South London Hospital for Women and St James Hospital Balham. She was a member of the Oxford Ophthalmological Congress and the Ophthalmological Society of the UK. She did not marry and in retirement she continued to live in North London with an old friend and devoted herself to family, friends and gardening. She died peacefully, aged 88, on 9 September 1999.