By this time, he was in poor health and had financial difficulties due to the failure of the bank in which he had invested his savings – an article published in the Morning Post on 2 March 1896 encouraged readers to contribute additional relief for Noble and his wife, in addition to the £15 he received annually from the Bentinck Benevolent Fund.
[10] Noble suffered from asthma and epilepsy at the time of his death in Gullane, East Lothian on 19 September 1897, aged 83.
[2] Noble won the inaugural running of the Cambridgeshire Handicap on Lanercost, who was carrying 8st 9 lb and giving 23 lbs to runner-up Hetman Platoff.
[14] In his later years, Noble was a horse trainer in Gullane, which in the middle part of the 19th century was referred to as the ‘Newmarket of the North’.
[15] In his book, ‘Turf Memories of Sixty Years’, Alexander Scott describes how “long streams of thoroughbreds would be seen galloping over the beautiful old turf on the hilltop.”[15] According to Scott, in the early 1860s William would sit at night with other trainers including James Binnie and Jos Arnold, making matches between horses they trained for various owners, to be decided early the following morning on the Downs for a side stake of £1.