Herbie Sperling was one of the last real, old-style, tough Jewish hoodlums and a New York City heroin kingpin.
He was generally known to have a foul mouth and a bad attitude, and he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. He also voiced his hatred of rats and stool pigeons. During his later years in prison, Sperling was even heard lamenting, “What happened to honor? As a kid, I was taught that being a tattletale was a bad thing.”
Herbert (Herbie) Sperling was a poverty-stricken Jewish kid born on December 29, 1938, in the gritty Hells Kitchen section of Midtown Manhattan’s far Westside. His parents were immigrant Jewish parents from Eastern Europe. By the time he was a teen, Sperling was said to have relocated down to the Little Italy area around the 6th and 4th wards, where he would reside and hang around the area’s Italian hoodlums for the rest of his days.
He had little supervision at home. His father, Irving, died when Herbie was only one year old, and his mother, Cecilia, didn’t have the wherewithal to properly raise and deal with him. It would soon lead him astray.
Sperling was always in trouble in school or on the streets with the cops. He was sent to a juvenile reformatory at the age of 13 for truancy. He banged around in his early years as a bar bouncer and even boxed as a featherweight.
