Groups with a quotient that contains the original group as a direct factor

We prove that given a finitely generated group G with a homomorphism of G onto G × H, H non-trivial, or a finitely generated group G with a homomorphism of G onto G × G, we can always find normal subgroups N ≠ G such that G/N G/N × H or G/N G/N × G/N respectively. We also show that given a finitely presented non-Hopfian group U and a homomorphism φ of U onto U, which is not an isomorphism, we can always find a finitely presented group H ⊇ U and a finitely generated free group F such that φ induces a homomorphism of U * F onto (U * F) × H. Together with the results above this allows the construction of many examples of finitely generated groups G with G G × H where H is finitely presented. A finitely presented group G with a homomorphism of G onto G × G was first constructed by Baumslag and Miller. We use a slight generalisation of their method to obtain more examples of such group