three prisoners were bought to the execution ground, their legs shackled and the hands cuffed behind them.  The American style coiled nooses were attached to a spreader bar suspended from the jib of a crane.  At the signal all three were simultaneously lifted off the ground and became fully suspended.  The two men appeared to become unconscious almost instantly but a few seconds after being lifted into the air Houriyeh began to struggle hard, continuing for just over a minute before becoming still.  Some 5,000 people, including judiciary and police officials, witnessed the execution and it was secretly videoed on a mobile phone.  The video seems to bear out 19th century newspaper reports of short drop hangings in Britain and the USA, where women often seemed to die harder than men. Click here for a photograph. Does the prisoner feel pain where the drop is sufficient to break their neck? Obviously no one can be sure but it is generally held that if the person does feel pain, it is only during the instant that their neck is broken which can be measured in fractions of a second (see below). Those who witnessed 20th century British hangings never described any obvious suffering on the part of the prisoner and the two post-mortem reports that are available do not seem to indicate anything but a quick death. There were no signs of conscious suffering in the independently witnessed hangings of Westley Allan Dodd and Charles Campbell in Washington and Billy Bailey