What Were The Poor Laws In The UK?

The Poor Laws were a series of Acts, the earliest of which was passed in 1601.  The Poor Laws were designed to alleviate some of the very real suffering which poor people faced.   Parishes were given the ability to provide facilities and materials to give the poor work.  They could then use this profit to give relief to old people, children and to build poorhouses.  These poorhouses became known as workhouses.
In 1834 another Poor Law was passed which forbade relief being given to any poor person who was not in a workhouse.
The reality was that the workhouse was intolerable for anyone but people truly on the edge of starvation.  By only allowing those people in the workhouse to be given assistance, people were effectively trapped within the workhouses.  Particularly for children born there, it was very difficult to escape the cycle of poverty in which they found themselves.  However, by banishing the poor to the workhouses, the middle classes did not have to face the problem of 'the poor'.