10-year lease on the inn itself, and the stock of the inn. For some reason, the business was being offered for sale as a going concern. However, Turnbull was able to continue the business; in an advertisement in 1772, addressed to 'The Nobility and Gentry, and others, travelling the Great North Road between London and Edinburgh', he contradicted a 'malicious report' that service at The Angel had declined, assuring readers that business was conducted as before. This gives a clear idea of the clientele he hoped to attract. Another picture of the inn and its clientele is given by an incident in 1763, when a former employee broke into the Inn, stealing, from one of the guests, £67 in gold and two pairs of stockings, as well as two silver salt cellars belonging to the Inn. Turnbull pursued her all the way to North Shields, where she was captured boarding a ship. The inn thus attracted wealthy travellers, and it was important to the business for Turnbull to recover his guest's property. Postmaster at Alnwick In 1768 he also became the postmaster at Alnwick. According to the later account of William Green, himself a piper to the Duke, during this time his uncle William Cant (1751–1821), also a piper, worked for Turnbull as postboy, and learned with him. Green also stated that Turnbull was the best piper in the region, and that John Peacock, then a teenager, studied the pipes with Turnbull around this time, having initially learned from Old William Lamshaw (1712–1796). As Green was born in the year Turnbull died, he cannot have known him directly, but he is likely to have reported accurately what he was told about him when young, particularly by his uncle William Cant. Turnbull would have still been a recent memory when Green was learning the pipes. Death On 9 April 1775, "about eleven o'clock, as Mr Jos. Turnbull, post-master of Alnwick, and another gentleman, were returning from Heckley Grange, where they had been upon a visit, the gentleman in company with Mr. Turnbull alighted upon the road, and by some accident his horse got from him; Mr. Turnbull riding after, and endeavouring to stop the horse, fell off, fractured his skull and died on the spot." Having died suddenly, he was intestate; the administratrix of the estate was his widow Elizabeth. Tragically, on 12 April, one Sarah Ann Cranston Turnbull, the daughter