The Poor Law Act 1601 was also known as the Elizabethan Poor Law, 43rd Elizabeth or Old Poor Law after the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834.
It formalised earlier practices of poor relief distribution in England and Wales and was a refinement of the 1597 Act that established Overseers of the Poor. The Old Poor Law was not one law but a collection of laws passed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The system's administrative unit was the parish, it was not a collectivist or centralised government policy but a piece of legislation which made individual parishes responsible for Poor Law legislation. The 1601 saw a move away from the more obvious forms of punishing paupers under the Tudor system towards methods of 'correction'.