The Age – Lawrence Money November 15, 2014

Image: Darvell Hutchinson (after Moroni) by Ponch Hawkes

Darvell Hutchinson, an 84-year-old legend of Melbourne philanthrophy.

How did wealthy Melbourne heiress Helen Macpherson Smith end up in a pauper’s grave in Marseilles 63 years ago? Darvell Hutchinson, 84, still cannot work it out – and, heaven knows, he has tried. Hutchinson, who has managed the lady’s trust for the past 50 years, has been to Cannes to visit the Majestic Hotel where Smith died of pneumonia, aged 77. “But they told me the old records had been destroyed,” he says.  He has also been to the cemetery at Marseilles where Smith’s body was taken and buried in the paupers’ section. “God knows why,” he says. “When her solicitors found out, they had her exhumed and she was cremated, according to the terms of her will.”

Few would know much about the Helen Macpherson Smith will but its massive impact has so far channelled over $105 million into the Victorian community through carefully vetted grants. This has included $5.75 million to set up a Macpherson Smith Rural Foundation which assists people in Victorian country areas.

And there is plenty more to come – the HMS trust has grown in capital from the original 275,000-pound bequest to more than $100 million today, thanks largely to the canny stewardship of Darvell Hutchinson. This week there was a reception at Government House to salute his retirement as trust chairman. In Melbourne’s philanthropic world Hutchinson is regarded as a visionary, one whom Sir Andrew Grimwade hails as “once in a generation”.

So immersed has Hutchinson been in the HMS trust that his wife of 54 years, Barbara, may well consider the late benefactor as the “other woman” in her husband’s life. Indeed, one of Darvell Hutchinson’s great regrets is that he never met the lady he calls “Madam” as he was appointed trustee at age 33 in 1964. “That was 13 years after Madam died,” he says.

Originally it was called the Helen M Schutt trust, carrying the surname of her husband, Victorian judge William Schutt. They had been married 22 years when Smith, Scottish-born and Melbourne-raised, left Australia in 1923 to live permanently in Europe. Schutt remained behind but the couple continued to travel together on holidays. In 1933 judge Schutt (who presided over the infamous Gun Alley murder case which saw Colin Ross hanged then later pardoned) died after falling down some stairs on the P&O liner Cathay. He was buried in the Red Sea.

As the couple had no children, the administration of her trust was left to her accountants. Hutchinson saw the possibilities and was inspired after attending the first world conference on philanthropy in Canada in 1987.

Now, with three adult children and six grand-children, he is stepping down. In his honour the trust has created the Hutchinson Indigenous Fellowship which will provide $45,000 each year for an artist’s residency at Melbourne University.

The trust also commissioned a portrait by photographer Ponch Hawkes which shows Hutchinson holding a yellow highlighter – a legendary implement in philanthropic circles that helped him sift through thousands of possible grants. Up to $105 million of them.