A Post Office clerk from Co. Cork, Patrick O’Keeffe was an active member of Sinn Féin and participated in the Easter Rising in 1916. Initially stationed at the Imperial Hotel, he later relocated to the GPO. Following his internment in Frongoch prison camp, he became general secretary of Sinn Féin in 1917 and was re-arrested in relation to the “German Plot” a year later, during which time he was also elected as TD for North Cork. He supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty and, after losing his seat in the 1923 general election, he served as deputy governor of Mountjoy prison during the Civil War. He took over many of the duties of the actual governor, Philip Cosgrave, who was ill for much of his period in charge. O’Keeffe held this position until August 1923 and was subsequently appointed as a clerk of the senate, where he remained until 1947.
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