A lot of this is historians using a euphemism in a time when homosexuality was/is still frowned upon or outright illegal, and contemporary audiences not picking up on it.

Eg. “confirmed bachelor” or “he never married.” Wikipedia:

Rose Wild of The Times observed that even where it was used in an apparently non-coded form in historic obituaries, the phrase could still be revealing of the subject; Wild gave the example of a school master’s obituary from 1923 that stated “he never married”, but continued that he “usually spent his holidays in a little inn frequented by seafaring men at Falmouth”. … A similar phrase, “confirmed bachelor”, was used in the second half of the 20th century…