The younger brother of WT Cosgrave, Philip Cosgrave was born in Dublin in 1884. He attended the first meeting of Sinn Féin at the Rotunda in 1905, along with his brother and uncle P.J. He joined the 4th Dublin Battalion of the Irish Volunteers in 1914 and was stationed at the Marrowbone Lane distillery and the South Dublin Union during the Easter Rising. Following the surrender, he was arrested and placed in the cell beside his brother in Kilmainham Gaol. He was sentenced to death, but this was reduced to five years of penal servitude and he was imprisoned at Dartmoor and Lewes jails before being released in 1917. During the War of Independence, he acted as quartermaster of the IRA’s 4th Dublin Battalion, and was elected as a Sinn Féin MP for Dublin North West in 1921. He won a Dublin South seat for Cumann na nGaedheal in the 1923 election, but died suddenly in October of that year.
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