Notes for: Audrey Mary Parsons

Penrose Halso wrote in 2015:
I am researching a book about the early years of the Marriage Bureau, established in Bond Street W1 in 1939. The connection is that one of the co-founders of this (at the time) extraordinary institution
was one Mary Oliver, like her partner, Heather Jenner, a 25-year-old who had spent time in India, and wanted to help men returning to England on leave to find a wife. "Mary Oliver" has led me a merry dance for I have at last discovered that the name is a pseudonym for Audrey Mary Parsons, who when not living in London was with her parents, Olive Agnes Parsons (née Oliver) and Henry Arthur Parsons, who lived at Anstey Hall Farm from 1936 to 1959. It is quite possible that she adopted a pseudonym for fear of family disapproval of what was then regarded as probably no more than a brothel! The story was that she was the "daughter of a Cambridgeshire
parson"; so I suspect that she aimed for elements of truth by using her second Christian name and her mother’s maiden surname, and converting "Mr Parsons" into "a parson". I wonder if there are any records or memories of Audrey, or her parents, or her brothers (I believe she had two). I should be most interested to know if the family were gentlemen farmers or working farmers. "Mary"’s story was that she was a debutante, which would imply a certain amount of wealth; but it is impossible to know what of her story to trust! She left the Marriage Bureau c 1943, and in 1947 sailed on the Queen Elizabeth to the USA, but with the intention (stated on the ship’s document) of returning to England. She was then aged 33 and unmarried, with no given occupation. But so far I can find nothing about her between 1943 and 1947, nor after 1947