At some stage in his early career, Stackhouse met and formed a close friendship with the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott. In 1909, Scott was embarking on a new quest for the South Pole, following Ernest Shackleton's near miss earlier that year. Stackhouse became an honorary secretary to Scott's "Terra Nova" expedition, and took charge of fund-raising in the north of England; he also committed a substantial portion of his private resources to the enterprise. Scott's records show that the pony "Snooker King", otherwise known as "Jehu", was donated to the expedition by "J. Foster Stackhouse and friend". Scott would have taken Stackhouse to the Antarctic, had the latter been available, a fact later confirmed by the expedition's second-in-command, E.R.G.R. "Teddy" Evans.