Louisa DaCosta Trust helping with finances of needy public hospital patients since 1902

Financially-struggling patients at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (pictured) and other South Australian public hospitals can seek help from the Louise DaCosta Trust.

Louisa DaCosta Trust has been providing financial help to needy patients after admission and discharge from the (Royal) Adelaide Hospital and now all South Australian public hospitals for more than 100 years.

From Jewish lineage but brought up in the Anglican church, Louisa da Costa came to Adelaide from England in 1840 with her brother Benjamin Mendes da Costa and only stayed for seven years but their impact on South Australia was lasting. As a successful merchant, Benjamin built a big property estate in South Australia, notably in the city centre.

After returning to England with Louisa (neither ever married) in 1848, Benjamin died in 1869 and his bequest eventually provided the site for St Peter’s Cathedral at North Adelaide and the major income from the sale and rent of his Adelaide property to St Peter’s college.

Benjamin and Louisa’s philanthropy was quiet but out of deep interest.

Back in the UK, Louisa gave equal to $250,000 annually to people and institutions including South Australian – from her interest in valuable Adelaide city property.

Before Louisa da Costa, lonely and going blind, died in 1898, aged 91, she left all her estate to South Australian governor Fowell Buxton to establish a Samaritan fund for needy convalescents connected to Adelaide Hospital. Maurice Salom, William Gilbert and E.B. Colton in 1902 set up the trust that has given millions of dollars to help needy patients since then.

Louisa da Costa’s Samaritan fund started its work in 1899 helping three needy patients. This grew to 306 in 1901, 380 in 1901 and 373 in 1902 – 1,152 cases at a cost of £508 5/6. The fund income came from rent from the Aurora Hotel in Hindmarsh Square. The Aurora was sold in 1983 before being demolished for an office block.

The DaCosta Samaritan Fund trustees were incorporated in 1953 and from 1967 (updated in 2008) it was legislated that the trust could extend its help to patients beyond the Royal Adelaide Hospital to patients of all South Australian public hospitals. In a typicalfive years since, it has provided $1.4 million to help needy patients.

The trustees continue to be the only ones to decide the public hospital patients who are eligible to for financial help from the Louisa DaCosta Trust. They rely of expertise from health professionals, from social workers to podiatrists – to assess patients’ financial needs.

Louisa da Costa’s concern for health care needs extended to funding a ward for Palmerston (now Darwin) hospital in the 1870s when South Australian administered the Northern Territory. Her gravestone in Brighton cemetery, UK, is inscribed aptly: She hath dispersed abroad and hath given to the poor.”