Lexicographic sums and fibre-faithful maps

The notion of lexicographic sum is introduced in general categories. Existence criteria are derived, particularly for locally cartesian closed categories and for categories with suitable coproducts. Lexicographic sums satisfy a generalized associative law. More importantly, every morphism can be factored through the lexicographic sum of its fibres. This factorization and the two types of maps arising from it, fibre-trivial and fibre-faithful, are studied particularly for partially ordered sets and forT₁-spaces.