Btw, if anyone's interested this is a UK site by a GP and a mohel (ritual circumciser)
He makes it clear that babies do feel pain, that many parents don't believe in pain relief, but he offers it as an optional extra.
It would be interesting to know how many take it up.
Oh and about half way down this page describes it being done the traditional way at a party in someone's house.
" First, he solicited the help of a man from the group and instructed him to hold the boy's legs apart and down so they would be out of the way. Another man was asked to hold the boys arms still. The doctor then applied two surgical clamps to either side of the foreskin. It must have hurt a little, because the boy began to cry. From this point forward, they had difficulty keeping the wine soaked guaze in the boy's mouth and had to keep tucking it back in.
By pulling on the clamps the doctor was able to make various measurements of the length of the stretched foreskin and the location of the tip of the glans (the "head" of the penis). The boy was not happy with all this pinching and pulling.
The doctor then produced a device clearly designed specifically for circumcisions. It consisted of two flat plates of stainless steel, approximately 3"x2" and 1/8" thick, hinged at one end so that when closed would create a 3"x4" flat plate. He stretched the foreskin again way out over the glans and locked the large flat clamp in place just beyond the point where the tip of the glans would be (as determined by the measurements taken previously). The clamp was applied on an incline, as viewed from the side sort of like this =\ only on a more pronounced angle.
Although the inside edges of the clamp did not appear to be sharp, the device was so tight that as soon as it was locked in place the boy went from being upset to being hysterical. He turned bright red from head to toe, and the quality of his crying became impossible not to empathize with. Many people looked away, including the parents who both seemed a little faint. By the time the foreskin was removed, the baby was relaxing into a endorphin bathed wailing that sounded much relieved compared to the screaming that had gone before. These people knew it would hurt like hell. There was no delusion here"