It wasn’t until 1906 when an opportunity enabled the Sisters of Mercy to open their first hospital—in a private house named ‘Aubigny’, at North Quay.
‘Aubigny’ was a temporary facility to be used until the Sisters of Mercy could raise enough money to build a hospital at their South Brisbane site. The combination of this small fee-paying private hospital and an intensive fundraising effort secured the funds to construct a hospital within the South Brisbane site.
The first Mater Misericordiae Private Hospital, located in rented premises in Brisbane’s North Quay, opened its doors on 4 January 1906 with accommodation for 20 patients. By the end of its first year, the hospital had treated 141 patients.
The house, named ‘Aubigny’, overlooked the Brisbane River and was designed by the distinguished nineteenth century Queensland architect, Benjamin Backhouse, for merchant Samuel Davis, a founder of Brisbane’s Jewish congregation. Built in 1865, the house, with a small synagogue in its grounds, was a handsome three-storied building surrounded on all sides by verandahs.
For the Sisters, a fee-paying private hospital was both a means of addressing the new hospital’s immediate financial needs and a stepping-stone to their ideal of providing a free public hospital for the poor.